PDF (Lessons learned in drug abuse prevention: a global review)

INTERNATIONAL
● Creation of community organisations with responsibility for continuous planning in
drug abuse prevention provide a core of community facilitators.
● Mobilisation of several communities to work together against such crucial and
collective issues as unemployment raised the awareness level of beneficiaries.
● The exposure to drug abuse prevention messages of several thousand youth, through
concerts, fairs and other public events and activities increases the coverage beyond the
target community to the national level.
In Jamaica
● A general increase in the knowledge and awareness of drugs, including the ability to
recognise drug use was facilitated through the IDER programme.
● Training in organisation and leadership which resulted in the revival of 7 youth clubs
and the emergence of 5 new ones, and the consequent provision of various sporting
opportunities, including athletics activities and a School Sports Association.
Lessons Learned:
● Integrating public and civil organisations for IDER implementation was a
Herculean task: The IDER programme faced a massive challenge in creating an
integrated approach to demand reduction across a range of public and civil society
organisations, not to mention marrying this to community-based efforts and mobilising
the community groups involved. Even when public agencies are working well, competition
and focus on departmental objectives mean that the co-ordination of demand
reduction receives less priority. One option that Caribbean Governments could consider
in response is the establishment of dedicated drug action teams working at the local
level to bring agencies together.
“We are seeing more
young people
pursuing sports to
occupy their leisure
time instead of using
drugs.”
(Steve 32 year-old sports
instructor)
● Public perceptions regarding drug addiction need to be changed: Across the
Caribbean, drug demand reduction still faces the obstacle of strong, culturally specific
attitudes to drug abuse and abusers that predispose the public and the authorities
toward punishment and ostracism rather than rehabilitation. Drug control advocacy
should include efforts to influence the public perception of drug addiction beyond the
simple message of ‘Don’t take drugs’.
● Economic structures must be improved hand-in-hand with demand reduction
activities: Many communities involved in IDER saw poor public services and a lack of
employment opportunities as their foremost problems and, at least in part, their principal
reasons for resorting to drug abuse, drug trafficking or related crime. IDER alone
cannot be expected to solve the economic problems that frequently afflict small island
states with limited resources. The Bahamas study demonstrates the positive impact of
enterprise development in combination with a demand reduction initiative.
● More information on the prevalence and nature of drug abuse is required:
There is still insufficient information available on the nature, incidence and impact of
drug abuse in the Caribbean. More data must be collected in order to design bettertargeted
and more effective demand reduction interventions. UNDCP’s Rapid Situation
Assessments for Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Haiti are an excellent start. More
formal household surveys are also required.
● The social impact of drug abuse on communities needs more in-depth study:
The IDER programme proved that short-term participatory assessments of drug abuse
and related problems in target communities were invaluable as a means of designing
appropriate interventions. Due to the sensitivity of Caribbean jurisdictions to information
on the impact of drug use, and the extreme difficulty of carrying out the relevant
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