Substance abuse prevention, also known as drug abuse prevention, is a process that attempts to prevent the onset of substance use or limit the development of problems associated with using psychoactive substances. Prevention efforts may focus on the individual or their surroundings. A concept known as "environmental prevention" focuses on changing community conditions or policies so that the availability of substances is reduced as well as the demand.
Substance abuse prevention efforts typically focus on minors – children and teens. Substances typically targeted by preventive efforts include alcohol (including binge drinking, drunkenness, and driving under the influence), tobacco (including cigarettes and various forms of smokeless tobacco), marijuana, inhalants (volatile solvents including among other things glue, gasoline, aerosols, ether, fumes from correction fluid and marking pens), cocaine (including crack cocaine), methamphetamine, steroids, club drugs (such as MDMA), and opioids.
Of these, substance abuse prevention typically focuses on alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana based on gateway drug theory which proposes that these three substances are typically used first and may ultimately lead to the use of "hard drugs" like cocaine or heroin.
Read more about Substance Abuse Prevention: Protective and Risk Factors, Community and School-Based Prevention Programs, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words substance, abuse and/or prevention:
“Strong be thy wallis that about the standis;
Wise be the people that within the dwellis;
Fresh is thy ryver with his lusty strandis;
Blith be thy chirches, wele sownyng be thy bellis;
Riche be thy merchauntis in substance that excellis
Fair be thy wives, right lovesom, white and small;
Clere be thy virgyns, lusty under kellis:
London, thou art the flour of Cities all.”
—William Dunbar (c. 1465–c. 1530)
“Liberty is the air that we Americans breathe. Our Government is based on the belief that a people can be both strong and free. That civilized men need no restraint but that imposed by themselves against the abuse of freedom.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“... if this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)