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School-based drug prevention curricula constitute the nation’s most prevalent strategy to prevent adolescent drug use. We evaluated the effects of one such curriculum, Project ALERT, on adolescent substance use. In particular, we sought to determine if a single effect on 30-day alcohol use, noted shortly following the completion of the 2-year program, could be detected 1 year later. We also looked for delayed effects on other outcomes of interest, namely lifetime alcohol use, and 30-day and lifetime use of cigarettes, marijuana, and inhalants. We employed a randomized controlled trial that used school as the unit of assignment. Thirty-four schools with grades 6–8 from 11 states completed the study. Seventy-one Project ALERT instructors taught 11 core lessons to sixth graders and 3 booster lessons to seventh graders. Students were assessed prior to the onset of the intervention, as sixth graders, after the completion of the 2-year curriculum, as seventh graders, and again 1 year later as eighth graders. This paper examines data from the pretest and final posttest. Using hierarchical nonlinear modeling, we found that our earlier effect on 30-day alcohol use did not persist. Further, we continued to find no effects for lifetime alcohol use and both the lifetime and 30-day use of cigarettes, marijuana, and inhalants. Our findings do not support the long-term effectiveness of Project ALERT, when delivered to sixth graders.

This article represents a replication and extension of previous studies of the effects Project ALERT, a school-based substance use prevention program, on the prodrug beliefs of adolescents. Specifically, the authors' research examined Project ALERT's effects on adolescents' intentions to use substances in the future, beliefs about substance use consequences, normative beliefs, and resistance self-efficacy. In all, 34 schools with Grades 6 to 8 completed this randomized controlled trial and 71 Project ALER instructors taught 11 core lessons to 6th graders and 3 booster lessons to 7th graders (one grade level earlier than in previous studies). Students were assessed in 6th grade prior to the onset of the intervention, in 7th grade after the completion of the 2-year curriculum, and again 1 year later in 8th grade. The authors found no evidence to suggest that Project ALERT had a positive impact on any alcohol, cigarette, or marijuana prodrug beliefs. Implications for school-based substance use prevention are discussed.

We examined whether parental monitoring at baseline predicted subsequent substance use in a high-risk youth population. Students in 14 alternative high schools in Washington State completed self-report surveys at three time points over the course of 2 years. Primary analyses included 1,423 students aged 14–20 who lived with at least one parent or step-parent at baseline. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we found that high parental monitoring at baseline predicted significantly less use of alcohol, marijuana, downers, cocaine, PCP, LSD, and prescription drugs and drinking to intoxication at the first posttest. Approximately 1 year later, high parental monitoring at baseline predicted significantly less use of alcohol, cocaine, prescription drugs, uppers, and ecstasy and drinking to intoxication. Study results suggest that parental monitoring serves as a protective factor, even for high-risk alternative high school students. Including a parental monitoring component may increase the effectiveness of traditional drug prevention programs.

Issue Title: Special Issue: Creating Communities Where Youth Are Safe From Violence: Comprehensive Evidence-Based Youth Violence Prevention in Communities

Underage drinking continues to be an important public health problem and a challenge to the substance abuse prevention field. Community-based interventions designed to more rigorously control underage access to alcohol through retailer education and greater enforcement of underage drinking laws have been advocated as potentially effective strategies to help address this problem, but studies designed to evaluate such interventions are sparse. To address this issue we conducted a randomized trial involving 36 communities to test the combined effectiveness of five interrelated intervention components designed to reduce underage access to alcohol. The intervention was found to be effective in reducing the likelihood that retail clerks would sell alcohol to underage-looking buyers, but did not reduce underage drinking or the perceived availability of alcohol among high school students. Post hoc analyses, however, revealed significant associations between the level of underage drinking law enforcement in the intervention communities and reductions in both 30-day use of alcohol and binge drinking. The findings highlight the difficulty in reducing youth drinking even when efforts to curtail retail access are successful. Study findings also suggest that high intensity implementation of underage drinking law enforcement can reduce underage drinking. Any such effects of enhanced enforcement on underage drinking appear to be more directly attributable to an increase in perceived likelihood of enforcement and the resultant perceived inconveniences and/or sanctions to potential drinkers, than to a reduction in access to alcohol per se.

We estimated the proportion of the nation’s public school districts that have high school grades in which random drug testing is conducted. We collected data in spring 2005 from 1343 drug prevention coordinators in a nationally representative sample of school districts with schools that have high school grades; of these districts, 14% conducted random drug testing. Almost all districts randomly tested athletes, and 65% randomly tested other students engaged in extracurricular activities; 28% randomly tested all students, exceeding the current sanction of the US Supreme Court.