Understanding Drug Use: Prevention and Health Education
Health is considered a fundamental right, and its attainment requires the involvement of all social and economic sectors, in addition to strict health and societal planning. Individuals have the right and duty to participate individually and collectively. Therefore, health is a value, a fundamental right, a duty of the individual and society, and a positive concept for global living. In this context, interventions must be placed on the prevention of drug addiction.
In the same document, Delgado, Pablo, and Sanchez describe health education as the “training and educational activity which aims to increase health awareness and encourage individual responsibility in order to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and basic habits for the defense and promotion of health, taking responsibility for the decisions in their personal, family, and social lives.” Health education can provide people with the encouragement and the capacity both for the adoption of healthy lifestyles and to act on those environmental factors that are unfavorable.
Delving a little deeper into prevention of drug use within the field of health education, it is necessary to underline the importance of this area of prevention. Along with four others (geriatric care, social integration, risk reduction, and damage and information, training, research), these are the pillars of basic actions in dependence and other addictions.
For Sanchez, Aguilar, Jimenez, and Castanyer (1998), substance abuse prevention does not completely stop the occurrence of drug-related situations, but it can contribute effectively to minimizing it. This makes necessary technical planning of preventive interventions, within structures that allow for continuity and stability of prevention programs at different levels:
- Primary prevention: To avoid the appearance of the problem.
- Secondary prevention: Attempting early detection of drug use and immediate attention to potential implications.
- Tertiary prevention: Aimed at reducing the incidence and severity of problems associated with the consumption of these same drugs.
These authors believe that in order to design and implement drug use prevention, one has to take into account the complexity of factors affecting this problem. Risk factors are defined as those that increase the likelihood of problematic or undesirable behavior, i.e., factors that may encourage such consumption (low self-esteem, lack of autonomy, unhealthy lifestyle, overprotection, imitation of the group). Protective factors support or promote the full development of individual-oriented lifestyles and serve as buffers against risk factors (skills and educational models, communication, and social skills).
It is necessary to consider that preventive actions are directed at achieving the following objectives:
- Reduce or mitigate the use and/or abuse of drugs.
- Stimulate involvement and public participation in the construction of a healthy city.
- Contribute to the reduction of the risks of drug consumption.
- Affect specific groups with particular risks.
- Increase people’s ability to make free decisions.
- Involve the population and social partners in the prevention of drug abuse and addiction without substance.
- Enhance protective factors of each community and minimize risk factors.
- Support, promote, and coordinate community structures from preventive actions in different areas.
- Decrease the number of youths using drugs abusively, especially alcohol and/or tobacco.
- Prevent sporadic consumers from developing a drug dependency, promoting responsible consumption, especially in the context of high risk.
- Delay the age at first use of tobacco, alcohol, prescription drugs, and other addictive substances, as well as other addictive activities.
Prevention is, in short, any measure or action that tends to prevent drug use, and therefore the problems associated with it, or delay the onset when consumption cannot be avoided, or to try to prevent that consumption from becoming a drug dependency.
“Lyrical fascination with drugs is an impediment for which we have all gone, but ultimately it is unproductive. It makes you drunk, but it does not nourish.” – José Ángel Mañas
Education in Drug Use: Health Education and the Importance of Prevention
According to Bautista, Etcheberry, and their team (2004), the passage from childhood to adulthood is considered a critical stage of life, characterized by profound behavioral transitions in emotional, intellectual, sexual, and social beings. In a complex society like ours, it is difficult to absorb so many changes without even having had time to develop one’s own personality. As a result, this period will be characterized by insecurity, social skills deficits, lack of clear values, mixed feelings, etc., which will condition the individual and social behavior of children when faced with new social settings.
The starting age for consumption of addictive substances is between 11-17 years, varying according to the type of drug. The first contacts are usually with legal drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, to pass to illicit “soft” drugs, hashish, and marijuana, then amphetamines, and end with the “hard” drugs: cocaine, heroin, designer drugs, etc. This scale does not mean that all teenagers who have just started using drugs will progress to harder substances.
One must also take into account other addictive activities such as gambling, internet, video games, food (obesity, anorexia, bulimia), exercise (vigorexia), compulsive buying, etc. All these behaviors and previous activities share some factors that make a first approach (social, educational, and peer group). These different personal characteristics are conducive to a strong bond, and the role of the family to prevent or help to overcome the development of addiction is very important.
Consumer Education
Among other objectives, consumer education seeks to:
- Encourage reflection on the basic necessities of life.
- Develop a critical attitude towards advertising messages.
- Promote maximum respect for individual and collective property.
- Teach how to interpret labels and product information.
- Encourage participation in the defense of consumer rights.
Education on Drug Use
Education on drug use has different meanings: prevention and reduction of drug use to reduce the socioeconomic costs resulting from abuse. The objective is to promote attitudes and behaviors that minimize damage from drug use, given the low chance of objectives based on the elimination of consumption, especially on those drugs that are socially accepted.
Education on drug use tends to raise the following objectives:
- Provide information and knowledge about drug use and abuse.
- Promote healthy behaviors and attitudes.
- Promote positive alternatives for children and young people, fundamentally.
Ultimately, prevention through self-education involves training people with skills to solve problems and achieve integral development for themselves. Effective prevention will require that each and every one of the actors and sectors of the community are involved: families, the educational community, parents, etc.
Drug abuse has become a real health problem. It is therefore necessary to join efforts to enable all people to gain an understanding of the factors that determine health, and how they are enhanced or modified, from the perspective of health promotion and prevention in drug dependencies.
According to the United Nations (UN, 1980), treatment of the problem of drugs is most effective when used in the broader context of education for health. The WHO defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, which is not only the absence of disease.”