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Addiction science has undergone tremendous progress over the past five decades, transforming our understanding of drugs and their impact on the brain and society. Recent advancements offer hope in addressing the escalating challenges of drug use, addiction, and overdose. However, the need for evidence-based prevention and treatment strategies remains crucial in combating this ongoing public health crisis.
Prioritising Drug Prevention: Prevention is one of the most effective ways to combat substance use disorders. Research consistently highlights how drug exposure can interfere with brain development from prenatal stages to young adulthood, setting the stage for lifelong challenges. Children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable, as early drug experimentation sharply increases the risk of addiction later in life.
Adverse childhood experiences—ranging from poverty to trauma—also contribute to substance use risks by disrupting brain development. Preventative measures can mitigate these risks and promote resilience. For example, school-based programmes and community initiatives have demonstrated significant success in reducing drug use among young people. Importantly, these interventions offer long-term benefits, improving mental health and reducing dependency rates across generations.
Scaling up these preventative approaches is vital. By investing in evidence-based prevention at schools, healthcare facilities, and community centres, society can safeguard future generations from the devastating impacts of drugs.
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SUMMARY: Australian youth harm minimisation drug policies increased substance use and harm and were inferior to American abstinence polices. When Australia adopted abstinence polices, substance use and harm reduced
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Firstly, no credible individual on the planet concedes that recovery is better than prevention – However, prevention is always – always better than cure.
Three major demographics that must not only be considered but given highest priority in all drug policy and drug policy interpretations.
This better status of prevention is so because it considers and prioritises the following,
1. Citizens – Communities and their families
2. Children
3. Recovered and Recovering Alumni
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The 2024 United Nations World Day Against Illicit Drugs & Trafficking theme is “The evidence is clear: invest in prevention”. The internationally backed Declaration of Oviedo assiduously affirms that prevention must be the priority for our communities. This Asia-Pacific hearing saw commentaries from regional voices on the absolute need for prevention and demand reduction.
and Watch the presentations
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Learning is Education that Transforms:
Education changes behaviour, but what ‘kind’ of education does this?
Whilst we will examine key aspects of the Harms done by New/Novel Psychoactive Substances, what we don’t want to do is waste your time simply inventorying descriptive data about types and variants and impact, that may or may not give you some facts about this subject matter that you don’t already know.
We will attempt in this presentation to open a more proactive focus on the reducing of demand and diverting from NPS use.
One key framework for a behaviour transitioning educative process.
- Aware – Information (Whilst a starting point of contemplation, giving ‘facts’ in a vacuum has little traction in behaviour change)
- Move – Education (This is where knowledge is added giving facts some context for application and a potential direction)
- Change – Learning (This is where knowledge is applied in a sustained direction with purpose, under tutelage for a specific outcome – This helps create new behaviours)
It is important to understand that teaching and learning mechanisms and modes have many elements and both the cognitive, (but more specifically) the affective domain education pedagogies are enhanced by both evidence-based practice, as well as, by practice based evidence.
This is no more evident than in indigenous cultural settings, and of growing importance in sub-cultural ‘tribal’ settings too.
Evidence-based Practice & Practice-based Evidence?:
Efficacious pedagogies in the Affective Domain education arena include imperatives such as the contextualised sharing of relevant earned resiliency and lived experience with the learning audience. This is one a few vital components of an education strategy, that seeks to develop proactive and protective behaviours in the child and emerging adult. Lived experience alone (i.e. substance user) is only valuable in a protective context when it is paired with the earned resiliency that empowered them to exit and stand from substance use and its harms, that proves valuable in the behaviour change education process.
“One with lived experience is seen by the client/student as an authentic knowledge holder.”
Gemma Khodr – Indigenous Health & Alcohol CRE Forum September 2020
Contributing to the Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats (office.com)
- Understanding the Student Subgroups at Highest Substance Abuse Risks
- Drug Policies Contravening International Drug Conventions & Rights of the Child
- Building Resilience in Children Aged 9-13: A Most Effective Method of Illicit Drug Use Prevention
- World Drug Day 2023 #WWD2023 “People First: Promoting Prevention – Preventing Stigma.”