Youth Drug Use & Prevention

Schools were once considered "safe zones" from illegal drug-related activities, but those days are past. As Berliner and Biddle (1995) point out, "Since the 1960s large amounts of marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and hallucinogens have been sold to America's youth, and a good deal of that drug trade has been conducted in America's schools" (p. 233). Schools have responded to this activity in a variety of ways. Most have adopted some form of drug prevention curriculum. Others have initiated searches of students and their belongings. Still other schools have hired monitors to patrol restrooms, hallways, and school grounds. The expense involved in attempting to curtail drug activity has led to a diversion of time, resources, and energy that could be used to fulfill the educational mission of schools.

Students defend the use of drugs at school as a means of enhancing their experiences. Drugs purportedly help students cope with difficult situations at school, such as boring classes. Drug use also adds excitement to such extracurricular events as foot

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s, and posters as a means to make youngsters aware of the hazards of substance abuse. Social resistance training is another important component of a school-based program for drug abuse prevention. These programs help youngsters to identify pressures to use drugs and impart the skills needed to withstand such pressure. Pressure to initiate drug use among adolescents can come from a variety of social influences including family, peers, and the mass media. According to Dusenbury and Falco (1996), "Programs most successful at reducing drug use are school-based social resistance skills training programs" (p. 36). Social resistance training generally involves role-playing: "Typically, this training includes teaching students the specific content of a refusal message and how to deliver it in the most effective way" (Schinke, Botvin, and Orlandi, 1991, p. 29). An effective means of social resistance training is the use of skits that help students resolve their desire to stay out of trouble yet retain the friendship of the peer who is putting pressure on them to use drugs. Through a typical skit, a student learns how to always ask specific questions and to never get into situations that they don't understand. This technique is eff
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3334
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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