Drug prevention

The Drug prevention is a catalog of measures to prevent or reduce the consumption of harmful legal and illegal drugs. Drug prevention also means measures to prevent and reduce health damage caused by drug use.

What is drug prevention?

Drug prevention attempts to discourage people who are already dependent on drugs, in whole or in part, and to discourage non-addicts from using drugs. Drug prevention is not only concerned with illegal drugs, which it encounters in addiction patients without threatening legal consequences, but also with legal, but health-damaging drugs.

It is mostly young people who first come into contact with drug prevention in school, as the risk of abusing legal and illegal drugs is high in adolescence. The work of drug prevention is divided into a socio-educational and a medical area, as the aim is not only to prevent or mitigate medical consequences, but also to keep young people away from the drug-related milieu of society. Adult drug prevention deals with the spread of harmful effects of drugs and the targeted treatment of drug patients who are already addicted.

It is already considered a success if illegal and legal drug use can be reduced. In the case of illegal drugs, medical substitutes are sometimes even offered that are not stretched and are therefore sometimes life-threatening. However, the ideal state of affairs in drug prevention is complete drug freedom.

Function, effect & goals

The work of drug prevention begins in childhood and adolescence with educational work and ends in the spectrum of adults. Since it consists of a combination of medical and socio-educational work, the disciplines complement each other. Drug prevention in a socio-educational sense uses large-scale anti-drug campaigns for the general population, which deal with the various types of drugs and provide tools with which drug patients can help themselves.

Alcohol or nicotine diaries help you visualize your own legal consumption and determine whether you already need help. These paths work well because of their anonymity, especially since dependence on legal drugs is not readily admitted. Programs and therapy places for drug withdrawal, especially from illegal drugs, are also offered to help more severe cases. Medical drug prevention educates about the health consequences of drug use and tries to deter the patient completely from drug use by deterring them.

The goal of drug prevention is to keep people away from using drugs who have not yet started. Ideally, people who are already using drugs should be persuaded to stop using drugs either on their own or through withdrawal. In the case of legal drugs such as alcohol and cigarettes, this is often no longer possible with mild drug addiction, so that the alternative goal is to reduce consumption.

The reduction must, however, take place to such an extent that the patient with his adapted consumption no longer or only very slightly endangers his own health and that of other people. Another area of ​​drug prevention is responding to new drugs, most of which are very dangerous or life-threatening, and preventing the spread of negative trends such as binge drinking among adolescents.

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Risks & dangers

Drug prevention in adolescents and adults who only deal with legal drugs is usually still very safe. Often addictions to these drugs are not so pronounced that those affected tend to attack drug prevention staff or harm themselves, even if they are already damaging their health. The specialty of drug prevention with legal drugs is that these drugs are socially accepted, but potential addiction is not.

Affected people like to downplay them and perceive their consumption as normal, which it is difficult to dissuade. You feel bothered by the work of drug prevention and can react negatively. In the case of mild alcohol dependence, for example, family members and friends who are most likely to recognize a problem often do not even allow those affected to point it out. More anonymous campaigns with specific tools therefore sometimes have more effects in these circles than direct contact. Drug prevention does not only offer help for those directly affected, but also for relatives and friends.

Drug prevention is far more difficult in the area of ​​heavily dependent patients or illegal drugs. Parents, teachers or friends can no longer be called on to help themselves or to help, as these drugs are illegal and may be linked to criminal offenses. Due to the severity of the damage to health, professional drug prevention specialists usually have to deal with individual cases. This means that you have to build trust in your patient and not only help him from a medical point of view to get involved in drug prevention and get through it, but also provide socio-educational advice. Cases of addiction to illegal drugs usually have a long "drug career" behind them, which also goes hand in hand with the decline of social life.

Drug prevention cannot be pursued in this area without leaving the person affected in an environment from the treatment in which he will not relapse again. When it comes to illegal drugs at the latest, self-help campaigns are no longer sufficient for drug prevention; instead, close cooperation between medical and socio-educational specialists in a rehab facility is necessary.