Young people, drugs and peer education: an evaluation of the Youth Awareness Programme

The research focused on the Youth Awareness Program (YAP), which provides information, advice, and counseling to young people, with a focus on drug education workshops provided in schools and youth clubs. YAP employs young people, many of whom have direct experience of drug abuse, to other young people. Results revealed that the workshops had an important role in consolidating antidrug opinions and reinforcing decisions not to use drugs for participants who had not used drugs. The workshops also appeared to discourage participants who already misused drugs from developing and extending their drug repertoires. Findings also indicated that youths' reliance on informal sources of information about drugs makes it vital to provide them with accurate information and advice that they can obtain with minimal effort. Findings also indicated that the acceptability of drug use to young people has been greatly overstated, that youth are active agents in the educational process, and that the central involvement of formal drug users is a crucial part of providing credible drug information to young people. Finally, peer education projects that are based around former drug users and that avoid approaches involving just saying no can be effective in imparting harm reduction information to young people, can reinforce the decisions of nonusers, and can reduce drug use among current users. Table, footnotes, and 68 reference