Project Towards No Drug Abuse

Drug abuse prevention programs may be delivered as universal (designed to affect the general population), selective (designed to affect certain groups of people who are at a higher risk for developing a problem, based on social, psychological, or other factors), or indicated (designed to affect high-risk groups of people who have already been identified as demonstrating noticeable signs or symptoms of developing a problem). Not all high school students use drugs, and most students who use drugs do not abuse them in adulthood. Perhaps prevention programs should focus on youth who are at the highest risk for drug abuse (selective or indicated). It may be more cost-effective to target youth who are most likely to abuse drugs in the future than to target much larger numbers of youth, many of whom will not abuse drugs. It is not surprising that one of the most difficult but important tasks in the minds of many drug abuse prevention practitioners is to intervene with youth at highest risk for future drug abuse. The task of indicated prevention was the primary goal of Project Towards No Drug Abuse. This chapter describes some of the program development work and results of a nine-year ongoing prevention project (Project Towards No Drug Abuse), addressing primaril