Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention

Adolescent substance abuse prevention has challenged health professionals, teachers, and parents for decades. Over the years many approaches [Page 15]were tried, tested, and failed. These failures were expensive not only for the costs of development and implementation but also for the costs associated with paying for thousands of individuals to get health care, go through the legal system, and possibly even end up in prison. However, as prevention science matured, interventions were developed to impact adolescent substance use and effectively reduce these costs for both the user and the taxpayer. Essentially, most of these interventions involve the design and implementation of health communication campaigns.