Alcohol Consumption, Smoking and Drug Abuse Among Icelandic Teenagers: A study into the effectiveness of the ‘Skills for Adolescence’ programme

Abstract

Many of the social and health problems of teenagers today are related to the use of intoxicating drugs. In 1990 the use of the Lions-Quest programme, Skills for Adolescence (SFA), began in compulsory schools in Iceland. With SFA the young are taught life skills in order to be helped to live a healthy life without tobacco, alcohol or other intoxicating drugs. The aim of this study, therefore, was to try to determine what factors influence teenage use of intoxicants and whether the attitudes and drug consumption of those teenagers who had participated in the SFA programme were any different from those who had not. The research is a continuation of a comparative study where students were administered questionnaires to ascertain their attitudes toward life and toward the use of intoxicating substances. In 1989 the survey covered 566 students 12–13 years of age and 3 years later in 1992 reached 500 of the former respondents when they were 15–16 years old. The schools were chosen such that the study reflected the attitudes of students both in sparsely and in densely settled areas. The study showed that of the 15–16 year olds 18.6% smoked daily, 44.4% had felt the effects of alcohol four times or more, and 5% had a history of repeated drug abuse (cannabis, sniffing solvents, etc.). The use of various intoxicating substances is strongly correlated, a fact that supports the hypothesis that attitudes toward life and conditions that lead to the use of one type of drug also support the use of other drugs. Those teenagers who used drugs had a great deal in common as regards attitudes toward life and the pattern of family relations. They were not as close to their families as were teenagers who did not use drugs, were seldom home in the evening, and had few interests in common with their parents. The parents were more often divorced, smoking in the home was more common, and alcohol consumption had more frequently caused family problems. These teenagers were more easily influenced, were more dependent on their friends, had less self-confidence, and were less apt to participate in sports and scouting. Their academic record was also lower. There was no significant difference in the level of drug use of teenagers who had participated in SFA and those in the control group. Research in other countries has shown that programmes of this kind have succeeded well in preventing drug abuse. The reasons why the present study did not show the same result may be because teaching materials of this kind are new to the Icelandic school system and also because the instructional material had not been given a real place in the legally required curriculum at the time the survey was carried out.