The ESPAD Study: implications for prevention

The Europe an Schools Project on Alcohol and other Drugs (ESPAD) was concerned with the substance use , beliefs, attitudes and risk factors among over 50,000 16-year-olds in 26 European countries. Based on this data, the present paper focuses on critical issues in prevent ion and uses a country-level analysis with focus on the extent that contextual and cultural factors interact with factors influencing the use of alcohol and other drugs. The results indicate that: (i) an emphasis on risks and dangers may be a poor prevent ion strategy since many young people do not believe the widely accepted dangers of certain forms of substance use (e.g. cigarette smoking); (ii) misperception of norms in relation to substance use , that is, the belief that use of alcohol and other drugs is more common than it actually is, emerged in most countries with the exception of Nordic countries; (iii) the correlation between perceived access to substances and actual use depended on the substance involved; correlations we re strongest for cannabis but low for alcohol; (iv) the measure of problem behaviour was used in the ESPAD study (truancy from school), is correlated with substance use in a way that is opposite to that predicted in problem behaviour theory; and (v) the re were no indications that the potential restraining factors that we re examined in this study (involvement in athletics and leisure) acted in a way that prevented people from experimenting with drugs. The results of this analysis suggests that far from our having identified a core set of universal influences that act to determine substance use, the importance of cultural and contextual factors have been underestimated as has the importance of the specific substance involved.