Are teen 'just say no' campaigns effective?

The Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission recently announced a new three-year drug prevention initiative, funded by grants from the state’s opioid settlement fund for prevention, enforcement, treatment and recovery efforts.

The University of Cincinnati's LaTrice Montgomery joined WVXU's Cincinnati Edition to discuss youth drug prevention programs and what research says about the most effective approaches.

The popular DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program that began in the 1980s originally featured a uniformed officer speaking to kids in a lecture style on how to "just say no" to drugs.

"As we now know, that lecture style doesn't always resonate with youth," said Montgomery, PhD, adjunct associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience in UC's College of Medicine and a licensed clinical psychologist. "So we’ve learned it needs to be much more interactive and include not only drug resistance skills but social and emotional skills."

As research has progressed, Montgomery said DARE is still around but features a different approach that includes the REAL (Refuse, Explain, Avoid and Leave) method.

Chris Evans, executive director of the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission, told WVXU their team is using a research-based approach to tailor their programs to what will be most effective. 

"It’s really designed to encourage young people to make positive life choices and help build up their resilience," he said. "What this program does is really shine a light again on those strengths of kids and finding a way for them to identify and strengthen what’s going on with them. And we’ve seen the studies have indicated that is a better approach to dealing with kids nowadays in terms of getting them to be educated and to listen and to make positive choices in this space."

Listen to the Cincinnati Edition segment.

Featured photo at top of an officer speaking with children at school. Photo/SDI Productions/iStock.