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A Different Dose of Drug Education
A new curriculum encourages high schoolers to abstain from substance use but acknowledges not all of them will.
By Katelyn Newman Staff Writer
Nov. 14, 2019
A NEW HIGH SCHOOL DRUG education curriculum aims to overhaul the
Reagan-era "Just say no" mindset by teaching students how to critically
think about and use drugs safely – if and when they choose to use.
In early October, the Drug Policy Alliance – a nonprofit that advocates
for a harm-reduction approach to drug use – released its 15-class
"Safety First: Real Drug Education for Teens" curriculum for free
online, enabling teachers to download and incorporate the lesson plans
into their health education classes. Much like a shift from preaching
total abstinence to openly discussing safe sex, the goal is to help
students make healthy choices.
"It takes a realistic approach, encouraging abstinence but also
teaching strategies that help young people keep themselves or others
safe if they ever choose to use drugs," says Sasha Simon, program
manager for the initiative.
"Even if teens aren't using, as they get older, they more than likely
will engage in some form of substance use, so the idea is to make sure
they're prepared for the life course," Simon says.
Created to align with the National Health Education Standards and
Common Core learning standards, the roughly 45-minute lessons range
from covering how drugs work and various harm-reduction strategies to
the effects, risks and benefits of different types of substances,
including alcohol, marijuana, e-cigarettes and prescription and other
opioids.
In its "Introduction to Harm Reduction" sample lesson plan, the
curriculum instructs teachers to tell students that "the safest choice
when it comes to alcohol and other drugs is always to abstain" from
use. The lesson goes on to discuss other harm-reduction strategies,
such as using substances in moderation, using drugs "at a low dose and
a slow dosage," checking drugs with a test or screening kit for
dangerous adulterants and knowing what to do in an emergency situation.
"Thinking through all the possibilities and consequences can take some
time," the lesson says. "But with practice, you can develop the habit
of weighing your options and making a decision that will lead to the
safest and healthiest outcome for you and others around you.
Ultimately, putting harm reduction into practice will help keep you and
your friends safer."
A curriculum overview also says the lessons will help students
"understand the impact of drug policies on personal and community
health" and "learn how to advocate for restorative drug policies."
Simon says the curriculum, created for ninth- and 10th-graders, has
been downloaded more than 700 times, and a number of instructors
already have issued its online pretest to their students. Before
releasing it, the Drug Policy Alliance piloted the lessons in a New
York City high school and five high schools in the San Francisco
Unified School District to test how students, teachers and parents
responded.
Drew Miller, a health teacher at Bard High School Early College in New
York, tested the curriculum with his ninth-grade students in the spring
of 2018 and says he plans to continue to use it. He says the response
has been "overwhelmingly positive" from both students and adults.
After a presentation on the curriculum for the school's parents, "it
was kind of like, 'Well, my kids didn't get that last year' and, 'When
is my kid going to get it?'" Miller says. "The response has been that
they want more, and they want it in every brain."
When it comes to either sex or drug education, Miller says the American
approach has been to protect students by "not giving them information
and just trying to keep it from them and hoping that they won't do it,"
which he calls "a huge disservice."
"These youth – whether it's middle school, high school, elementary kids
– can start having conversations (and) need to be building these skills
and learning about this earlier so that, if and when they engage in
sexual activity or they or their friends are experimenting and using
drugs, they know what to do," he says.
Overall, Simon says the Drug Policy Alliance has "encountered
surprisingly little pushback," with the "number of overdose fatalities,
the evolving landscape of cannabis regulation and soaring rates of teen
vaping" causing parents to want a more comprehensive approach for their
children.
But Luke Niforatos, chief of staff and senior policy adviser for Smart
Approaches to Marijuana – a nonprofit opposed to marijuana legalization
and commercialization – says the connection between the lesson plans
and their parent organization's liberal approach to drug policy makes
the curriculum "a wolf in sheep's clothing," as "there really is not a
safe way to use drugs."
"Even with elements of harm reduction, drugs still have an untold
impact on the developing brain, on the body, and on families and
communities," Niforatos says. "You cannot remove the fact that science
tells us that drug use harms the developing brain, harms the way that
you develop as a young adult and into your adult life; it harms your
ability to form relationships, your emotional stability. Drug use harms
so many things about our youth, and there's no way to mitigate that."
The parent of a 3-year-old daughter, Niforatos says he hopes no school adopts the new curriculum.
"Our curriculums must continue to encourage youth not to use drugs at all, in any way," Niforatos says.
Yet Sophie Godley, a clinical assistant professor of community health
sciences at Boston University who has fought against an abstinence-only
mindset in sexual health for nearly two decades, says she found the
curriculum to be "outstanding."
"If implemented as intended, (it) really has an opportunity to not only
save lives but really change future conversations about drugs and drugs
in our society, and potentially really change how we approach talking
about drugs and alcohol with young people," Godley says.
"This is where we're at in 2019: We have some really scary things
happening in our communities, and young people need better tools than,
'Don't do it, don't ever do it' and, 'By the way, you're immoral and
bad if you do do it,'" Godley says. "What young people crave and
desperately want are meaningful conversations about how to live with
and work and survive with the drugs and alcohol that are currently in
our society, and furthermore, how to square and reconcile what they see
happening in the world around drugs and alcohol."
Mary Andres, co-director of the master's program in marriage and family
therapy and a professor of clinical education at the University of
Southern California, says she found the curriculum's online sample
lesson to be both "age-appropriate" and "beneficial" with its
critical-thinking approach.
"People that are promoting 'abstinence-only' feel like ... if you just
abstain, that's the safest path to go. But what happens is, it's almost
building a superstition around something" that puts what your peers may
be doing against what authority figures advise, Andres says.
"If you don't have an internal sense of, 'What's the right decision for
me? What does my knowledge tell me about this?' – which is what
critical thinking is – people are unprepared to make a decision,"
Andres says. "Trying to do any kind of comprehensive sex education or
harm reduction is just giving people information so that they will
critically think about it and make smart decisions" instead of
fear-based ones.
Abby Quirk – a research associate for K-12 Education at the
left-leaning Center for American Progress – says for both drug and sex
education, educational efforts need to maintain a balance of not
"introducing students to things they don't yet understand or that
they're too young to fully comprehend" while also not "waiting too
long."
"I think our society has a tendency to think that kids are pure and
innocent and hold them up to this standard that, especially with the
internet and social media, we're seeing just isn't true," Quirk says.
"Kids have a lot of information and they're going to get it from
somewhere, so they might as well be getting it in a medically accurate
and age-appropriate way from their teachers."
Miller agrees.
"The drugs aren't going anywhere – they've been around forever (and)
they're going to be here for a long time as well," Miller says. "The
kids have to know how to deal with them and how to be safe with them."
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