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INTRODUCTION
The field of youth substance use prevention has evolved considerably over the past 30 years. In the early 1970s, it was believed that simply increasing youths’ understanding of the harms posed by alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug use would result in lower prevalence of use (Goodstadt 1974). Today, it is a widely accepted premise that the causes of substance use are many, requiring that prevention efforts include a diverse array of strategies. Yet in spite of the recognition of the need for multiple strategies, it is possible to say that there are two general approaches to the prevention of youth substance use.
The first approach is directed toward individual youth and is based in the environments in which individual youth live, learn, and mature. These environments include families, schools, and faith-based communities, while the strategies implemented within them include school-based prevention education, family strengthening programs, life-skills training, and alternative programs and activities. Strategies aimed at the environments of individuals seek to educate, guide, and otherwise prepare individual youth to enter broader society equipped with the attitude and ability to resist the temptation to engage in alcohol, tobacco, or illicit drug use (Klitzner 1999).
The second type of prevention approach is based in the shared environment in which all youth live, learn, and mature. Often referred to as “environmental approaches,” these strategies seek to alter the shared environment such that access to substances is low and attitudes about engaging in substance use are negative. Thus, environmental strategies seek to change the social context in which alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs are used by reducing availability and spurring changes in normative beliefs about the acceptability of substance use (Klitzner 1999).
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