Taking a Skills Focused, Harm Reduction Approach to School Drug Education

While school drug education can be traced back to the temperance movement, the beginning of a scientific approach occurred in the 1960s, as a response to rising drug use by young people. Providing drug education in schools was seen as an important prevention strategy, on the assumption that teaching the dangers associated with use would increase abstinence. These early, information-based programs did not, however, change behaviour. The content of contemporary programs is mostly based on the social influence model, and the best achieve a small reduction in uptake. This begs the question as to practical benefit. Most young people are exposed to choices about drug use, and in the case of some drugs, notably alcohol, adult use is normative. So, is abstinence a realistic goal for school drug education, or would there be greater benefit in teaching young people the skills to reduce harm? This premise has been investigated by a number of school drug education research programs, with reasonable success. A parallel issue of importance in developing effective school drug education is the pedagogy. Here, research has demonstrated the value of fostering critical thinking, collaborative learning and skill development for making safer choices about use, including the choice to not use. Historically, school drug education, has not been considered effective prevention. Now, though, there is a better understanding of the elements that need to be present for a program to be effective, and research-based programs have been the most successful in changing drug use behaviour. Schools can play a role in drug prevention, but to maximise their influence they have to provide programs that are well researched, relevant and credible. In this regard, a harm reduction focus offers distinct advantages.