ABSTRACT
This chapter explains educational and family approaches to preventing young people from using and misusing drugs. Concepts such as resilience have emerged to inform public policies that seek to ‘steel’ or strengthen individuals to be better able to resist using drugs, rather than focusing on changing environments which make harmful drug use more likely. The chapter presents the educational and family approaches to preventing young people from using and ‘misusing’ drugs. Policymakers and those people who plan interventions for young people with a view to preventing drug misuse have often regarded schools and family settings as appropriate venues for personal interventions. The social and economic conditions that create the demand for ‘poverty drugs’ such as heroin are often ignored by policymakers. School-based curricula have become the mainstay of drug prevention policy in the USA and many other countries.
