Drug Education News

The Home Office have published some research on risk factors for drug misuse problems.  They say:

For the 10- to 16-year-olds the analysis shows that key factors associated with increased risk of taking any drug are:

• serious anti-social behaviour;
• weak parental attitude towards bad behaviour;
• being in trouble at school (including truanting and exclusion);
• friends in trouble;
• being unhelpful;
• early smoking;
• not getting free school meals; and
• minor anti-social behaviour.

And for the 17- to 24-year-olds:

• anti-social behaviour;

• early smoking;

• being in trouble at school (including truanting and exclusion);

• being impulsive;

• being un-sensitive; and

• belonging to few or no groups.

The paper looks at what makes young people resilient:

1. Having the opportunities to access drugs and displaying other factors that could put a young person at further risk of drug use.

2. Deciding not to use drugs for one or more of a range of reasons.

3. Having the skills to put refusal strategies into practice.

The paper goes on to say:

There appear to be three processes running concurrently for young people when they are resilient: they operationalise a schema in which they view drug use as harmful to themselves and therefore a behaviour in which they do not want to engage (schema theory), alongside which they have developed a set of resilience-focused goals (self regulation theory). They then draw on a strong sense of self-efficacy so that they are able to put this decision not to use into practice (self-efficacy theory). Based on these findings, a number of policy implications are suggested to encourage, promote and facilitate young
people’s resilience…

Programmes that promote discussion and tolerance of diversity within peer groups that are based on a ‘normative’ approach to education should be encouraged.5 These programmes could facilitate resilience by creating an environment where young people feel confident in expressing their personal choice about whether or not to use drugs and in which peer pressure to use would be minimised.