Eighteen months after the start of the program, called Project ALERT,
the number of new smokers in seventh and eighth grades and the number of
students who smoked occasionally or regularly both dropped, according to
Phyllis Ellickson, Ph.D., and colleagues at RAND Health.
The program also reduced the level of alcohol misuse like binge drinking
by 24 percent, but it did not affect the number of new alcohol drinkers
or reduce the number of occasional and regular drinkers, say the researchers.
“Curbing … alcohol use is difficult in societies where drinking
is widespread and socially acceptable,” Ellickson and colleagues
observe.
The number of new marijuana users also decreased by 24 percent in schools
that used Project ALERT, although the program did not affect marijuana
use by occasional and regular users.
The researchers say their findings counter critics who claim that school
programs fail to reach youth who already smoke and drink.
“These early smokers and drinkers have substantially elevated risks
for increased drug use and a variety of other high-risk behaviors, such
as violence, unsafe sex and dropping out of school. Hence, they are precisely
the youth who need help the most,” Ellickson says.
“Drug prevention programs in schools are a critical element of the
anti-drug effort, yet only 9 percent of school districts are using programs
whose effectiveness has been demonstrated through rigorous research,” she
adds.
The ALERT curriculum includes games, videos, small group
lessons and a home component, all designed to change students’ ideas
about who uses drugs and to give them skills and motivation to resist
drug use.
Ellickson and colleagues studied ALERT’s effectiveness
among 4,276 students. At the beginning of the study, almost 60 percent
of the students
had tried alcohol, about 33 percent had smoked a cigarette and 7 percent
had used marijuana.
The study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
