Binge drink scare tactics ‘do not work’

The Observer carries a story advising the government to change its tactics in how it talks about alcohol:

Research from the University of Bath found that the government’s constant emphasis on the dangers of drunkenness had failed to change people’s behaviour.

Public health messages instructing people to stick to moderate drinking were widely ignored, it concluded, especially among young people who thought the number of units recommended were ‘unrealistically’ low.

The research will be presented this week at a conference that I’m attending so you can expect to hear more about it on the blog.

The Telegraph also have the story.

Filed under: advertising, alcohol

A little dash of panic

The BBC Magazine has a look at the difference between US and UK public information films. Looking at the American ones they say:

These films were characterised by a lack of restraint on the part of their makers. The scarier the film, the likelier it was that schools would buy it to keep their rebellious pupils in the line.

There was no regulation, and this industry of social education moviemakers could say and show pretty much anything. Often working out of their garages, they would pull kids off the street and put them in starring roles.

In Drug Addiction, made in 1951, crazed “weedheads” laugh hysterically as they cut their mouths drinking from broken soda bottles. One toke of a joint would inevitably lead to mainlining heroin in these films, but the plot would be rounded off with a nice, happy, moral ending.

The piece concludes:

It’s hard to measure the effect of the films on either side of the Atlantic, but for Ken Smith, an American enthusiast, social pressures and exposure to mass media may have nullified them.

“Kids really tuned them out. By the 1960s it was just an exercise in futility.”

Filed under: advertising, USA

Age limit ‘encourages children to smoke’

The Times:

SCRAPPING the legal age limit for buying cigarettes would reduce dramatically the number of children who smoke, a study has claimed.

A survey of more than 92,000 teenagers in 27 countries has revealed that those living in nations where tobacco sales are not regulated are the least likely to take up the habit.

The study also found that raising the price of tobacco failed to cut the number of child smokers.

Filed under: tobacco

UK-style school drug prevention programme helps prevent regular drinking

Drug and Alcohol Findings write up findings about some drug education carried out in Dutch schools.

The similarity with the UK-style of teaching is in how few lessons there were – 3 per year – and the attempts to influence knowledge, decision making, refusal skills and pupils attitudes towards their own health.

By year three (age 15), only with respect to alcohol had substance use consistently and substantially risen less in programme than control schools. The effect was apparent in year one and maintained through to year three when, for example, 33% were drinking weekly compared to 46% of controls.

The gap on tobacco was there in the first year (when there was a focus on that substance) but narrowed during the period the programme ran.

While acknowledging the methodological flaws in the study and the limited outcomes the paper concludes:

The message of the study seems to be that less intensive programmes can create worthwhile prevention gains if they take a whole-school approach, pick up on individual problems as well as providing universal education, are well-structured but flexible, based on research and aim for realistic objectives.

Filed under: drug education, europe, research, Healthy School and Drugs project

Evaluating the Lions-Quest “Skills for Adolescence” drug education program First-year behavior outcomes

Via Drug and Alcohol Findings there’s an evaluation of a school based drug prevention programme, “Skills for Adolescence”, which finds:

For baseline users, there were three significant SFA delays in transition to experimental or recent use of more “advanced” substances: drinking to smoking, drinking to marijuana use, and binge drinking to marijuana.

Drug and Alcohol Findings makes it clear that the findings although rigorous only tell us about delivery in schools where there was a “heavy drugs teaching commitment” and not in schools where there isn’t the same amount of curriculum time.

Filed under: drug education, research, USA, Skills for Adolescence