Can Drug Prevention Programmes Reduce Substance Use by Participants’ Friends?

A research study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health offers two key findings:

• Besides reducing substance use between its participants, the Strengthening Families Programme for Youth 10 – 14 also reduced substance use amongst the friends of those who took part.
• Substance use reduction amongst the friends was shaped by newly gained attitudes towards drug use, as well as less unsupervised socialising.

The findings suggest that encouraging participants to advocate cautionary attitudes to substance use amongst their peers may help reduce young person and adolescence substance use throughout the community.

The authors of the study also claim that identifying the factors that support a programme’s diffusion can enable practitioners to improve their intervention design and implementation.

Click here to read more on the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) website.