Journal of Drug Education: Substance Use Research and Prevention

Current treatment policy is rooted primarily in either medical or psychological paradigms. These paradigms fail to recognize the social nature of drug addiction. Lacking in the literature is a sufficient theoretical or conceptual framework for a socially based treatment orientation. The present article provides a sociologically grounded framework, positing three analytically distinct social processes: 1) dissociation from the addict lifestyle and subculture, which involves the mechanisms of sacrifice, renunciation and investment; 2) association with the treatment program and its goals, which involves mechanisms of communion, mortification and transcendence; and 3) a reintegration process whereby the addict is mainstreamed into conventional society.

The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of Behavioral Self-Control Training in terms of reductions in alcohol consumption and blood alcohol concentration generally, and determine if changes on these indices effect reductions in drinking-and-driving incidents, blood alcohol concentration during drinking-and-driving incidents, and reductions in life problems. Self-referred individuals who drink and drive were randomly assigned into one of two experimental conditions: 1) Behavioral Self-Control Training (BSCT), or 2) Conventional Alcohol Education (CAE). Behavioral Self-Control Training resulted in nonsignificant (p > .05) reductions of: 1) alcohol consumption, 2) peak blood alcohol concentration, 3) drinking-and-driving episodes, 4) blood alcohol concentration during drinking-and-driving episodes, and 5) the severity of life problems. No significant differences were found between conditions on these variables. These results suggest that a controlled drinking goal may not be feasible for all drinking-and-driving populations.

This article presents a review and critique of recent research on the rate of Jewish alcoholism. The review revealed that studies indicating an increase in alcoholism among Jews has serious methodological flaws while the studies that were more methodologically sound indicated a continued low rate of alcoholism. It is concluded that alcoholism is probably still relatively rare among Jews. Predictions of future Jewish drinking practices and implications for further research are discussed.

Prevalence of smoking increases with increasing age during adolescence and, even though some studies report lower levels of smoking in this age group than in the past, it remains a significant problem. The purpose of this study was to compare correlates of smoking in a cohort of 4,641 young people ages sixteen to twenty-one with correlates of smoking in the same group when they were in grades 4 to 6. Questions were included measuring sociodemographic characteristics, smoking status of parents, teachers and peers, fitness and athletic participation, attitudes and knowledge. Stepwise multivariate statistical models were developed that accounted for half of the variance in smoking status. In contrast to the earlier follow-ups, attitude toward smoking has become a more important determinant than it was before, particularly among females. This finding suggests that smoking cessation and prevention programs for this age group should more closely resemble those for adults than those effective at younger ages, where modeling and dealing with peer pressure are stressed.

This study presents trend analyses of data collected from three large scale surveys using the same instrument during the years 1977, 1980, and 1983. The sampled cohort groups consisted of eleventh grade students from various high schools in Northeast Ohio. Frequency of usage, reason for taking drugs, and perceived harmfulness of thirteen categories of drugs are presented and compared with national trend data. Trend data are also presented for age of first experimentation with drugs and for several questions about drug use in the elementary grades. Sex differences in trends for all questionnaire items are analyzed.

The transition from adolescence to young adulthood is fraught with many important life decisions, including the choice of career direction and living arrangements. This study uses longitudinal data from 640 subjects to examine the impact of adolescent drug use on choice of life pursuit and living arrangements four years later as young adults. Use of nonprescription medication had no predictive power to understand young adult living situation or life pursuit, whereas adolescent cigarette use, alcohol use, cannabis use, and hard drug use all significantly influenced these young adult life situations. Results indicate that low levels of drug use are associated with parent and dormitory living arrangements and military and university career pursuits. On the other hand, high levels of adolescent drug use are predictive of marital or cohabitation living arrangements and none or full-time employment. These findings are interpreted to suggest that adolescent drug use is associated with precocious acquisition of adult roles (marriage, full-time jobs), perhaps to the ultimate detriment of the individual, since adequate adult maturity may not have occurred by this point in life.

Alcohol and Drunkenness is a newly developed science-oriented curriculum which constitutes an innovative attempt at coping with the problem of excessive drinking among high school students. It is a field-tested, practical and manageable model of a program aimed at influencing attitudes of Israeli teenagers toward excessive drinking and to affect their behavior accordingly. This preventive program in drug-education was developed at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, with the need for an appropriate preventive educational program in mind to be implemented and disseminated within the upper level of the Israeli school system. The preventive model of the curriculum is the so-called “social science model.” The program deals with primary prevention, is related to direct prevention, integrates the cognitive and the affective domains, fosters the decision-making component, emphasizes Jewish values and norms concerning alcohol consumption, and is interdisciplinary in approach. The program, which constitutes the first attempt of its kind in Israel to cope within the Israeli school system with excessive drinking, and the first attempt to battle excessive drinking in the framework of science education, can represent a curriculum model for future preventive programs within the realm of science education, as well as a curriculum model for interdisciplinary studies. Based on the results of a field test it is safe to conclude that the curriculum may be considered as a viable procedure in the prevention of excessive drinking among youngsters.

Low self esteem and familial environment have been separately linked to substance use and abuse. It is argued here that these are causatively linked, that parental relationship with the child provides the experiences from which self esteem is learned. Cognitive errors are made in the process, and faulty experimentation results in these errors being confirmed, rather than refuted, by peers. The self esteem, or evaluation of the self, once learned, is very resistant to change. When low, it becomes a source of background pain in a person's life. Substance abuse is a frequently observed, maladaptive attempt to cope with this experience of pain.