Education's Uncertain Saviour Education's Uncertain Saviour Twenty Years of Research

T issue’s ‘key study’ spanned two decades, starting modestly in 1980 with a study in two schools and peaking in 1995 with an investigation involving over 3500 pupils from 56 schools followed up for six years. What all the studies had in common was a secondary school drug prevention curriculum called Life Skills Training. Behind the curriculum and the research is the psychologist Professor Gilbert Botvin of Cornell University’s Institute for Prevention Research. For drug prevention, the importance of his work cannot be overstated. In any research-based guide, including official advice in the UK,1 it features as the most solid justification for school lessons about drugs, a breach in the otherwise largely justified pessimism. Understanding Dr Botvin’s work – its strengths, its limitations, and its transAtlantic transferability – is an essential starting point for anyone planning schoolbased drug prevention. After reading this article, you will at least be towards the end of that starting point.