Preventing Youthful Substance Use and Harm—Between Effectiveness and Political Wishfulness

Abstract

Drinking, smoking, and drug use are symbolic behaviors for young people, often involving a claim for adult status, and set against a “social clock” of expectations about appropriate behavior for a given age. Use is set in a social world of youth sociability, which young people strive to control themselves. Hence, it is difficult to prevent or delay use through adult-run institutions such as schools. Youth-oriented prevention initiatives succeed best when in tune with general social trends, so that youth cannot so easily feel hypocritically singled out. Regulatory approaches that apply to all have had some success in limiting and shaping youthful use and problems. Well-evaluated trials of efforts to insulate youthful use from harm are needed.

Keywords :

• symbolic behavior
• social clock
• youth prevention
• emancipation
• school-based prevention
• regulation

THE AUTHORS

Robin Room, Ph.D., is a sociologist who has worked on social, cultural, and epidemiological studies of alcohol, drugs and gambling behavior and problems, and studies of social responses to alcohol and drug-use-related problems and of the effects of policy changes. He has directed alcohol and drug research centers in the United States, Canada, and Sweden, and now in Australia, his native country. He was Professor and Director of the Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden (1999–2006). Prior to that he was Vice President for Research at the Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto, Canada (1991–1998), and before that Scientific Director of the Alcohol Research Group, a US National Alcohol Research Center (1977–1991). Since 2006, he is Professor of Social Alcohol Research at the School of Population Health of the University of Melbourne and the Director of the AER Centre for Alcohol Policy Research at Turning Point Alcohol & Drug Centre, as well as a professor at Stockholm University. He has been an advisor for the World Health Organisation since 1975, and has received awards for scientific contributions in the United States, Sweden, and Australia, and the premier award in alcohol studies, the Jellinek Memorial Award for Alcohol Studies.