Recommend two practical strategies that could be implemented by the community to ensure that the anti-substance abuse campaigns are effective?
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Explanation:
A COMMUNITY PREVENTION INTERVENTION TO REDUCE YOUTH FROM INHALING AND INGESTING HARMFUL LEGAL PRODUCTS
KNOWLTON JOHNSON, Ph.D., MATTHEW COURSER, Ph.D, [...], and BRIAN SAYLOR, Ph.D.
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Abstract
Youth use of harmful legal products, including inhaling or ingesting everyday household products, prescription drugs, and over-the-counter drugs, constitutes a growing health problem for American society. As such, a single targeted approach to preventing such a drug problem in a community is unlikely to be sufficient to reduce use and abuse at the youth population level. Therefore, the primary focus of this article is on an innovative, comprehensive, community-based prevention intervention. The intervention described here is based upon prior research that has a potential of preventing youth use of alcohol and other legal products. It builds upon three evidence-based prevention interventions from the substance abuse field: community mobilization, environmental strategies, and school-based prevention education intervention. The results of a feasibility project are presented and the description of a planned efficacy trial is discussed.
INTRODUCTION
The use of legal products to get high continues to be a serious problem among youth in the United States. The Monitoring the Future national student survey in 2004 indicates that inhalant use in the United States showed an upward turn from the prior year, while use of illicit drugs continued a gradual decline (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2005). Further, the lifetime prevalence rate for inhalant use among 8th graders exceeded the prevalence rate for marijuana, making inhalants the third most commonly used substance for this population, behind alcohol and cigarettes. In 2005, one in 15 students reported using cough or cold medicines to get high in the past year. Inhalant use remained stable (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2006).
Inhalable and ingestible legal products to get high do not constitute a specific type of substance, but rather a constellation of many types of substances found in various products readily available to children and adolescents. Most inhalable products are volatile solvents, comprising liquids that can dissolve a number of other substances including paint thinners, gasoline, and model airplane glue, as well as aerosols, nitrites (“poppers”), and anesthetics (Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission, 2004; Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, 2003; Wu, Schlenger, & Ringwalt, 2005). Legal products that can be ingested include over-the-counter medications like cough syrup, antihistamines, and cold medications; prescription drugs like OxyContin; and common household products like cooking extracts, disinfectant liquids, mouthwash, and other products high in ethanol (Banerji & Anderson, 2001; Fleming, McElnay, & Hughes, 2004; Mazor, DesLauriers, & Mycyk, 2005; Pates, McBride, Li, & Ramadan, 2002; Steinman, 2006). Studies indicate that harmful legal products like inhalants are often the first category of substances to be abused by adolescents and thus can constitute a gateway drug (Anderson & Loomis, 2003).
The use of harmful but legal products presents a number of prevention challenges. Many products widely available in retail stores, homes, and schools can be abused and share many characteristics of availability in common with other abused but legal products, alcohol and tobacco, while subjected to few formal controls. The body of prevention research relating to inhalant use and ingesting of legal products is very small (Brouette & Anton, 2001; Delva, Spencer, & Lin, 2000), and notably, no rigorous prevention study that targets the abuse of harmful legal products has appeared in the published literature. Only a few reviews of interventions to prevent inhalant abuse (d’Abbs & Maclean, 2000; Maclean & d’Abbs, 2002) and little prevention effectiveness have been reported (Harwood, 1995).
This article seeks to present an integrated community-based prevention intervention for preventing the use of harmful legal products among youth based upon existing evidence-based prevention programs and strategies that have the potential to prevent youth use of legal products to get high.
CONCEPTUALIZING A COMMUNITY PREVENTION INTERVENTION
As with most abused legal substances, total elimination of the use of inhalants and other harmful legal products by youth is unrealistic. As the field of prevention has matured, it has been recognized that any single strategy is unlikely to succeed and a reinforcing set of strategies has the greatest potential to reduce use.
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- Mandate that police are trained in the administration of Narcan for opioid overdoses and carry a kit with them at all times.
- A review with county AG, probation/parole, county sheriff and local hospital substance abuse agency to review sentencing guidelines for drugs and alcohol to reflect changing attitudes and laws.