Impacts-of-methamphetamine-in-Victoria-Community-Assessment-Penington-Institute

Development of coalitions of support and action across a broad range of organisations andindividuals (police, health, media, education,) consistent with the broad range of issues to beaddressed [70].Young people are an important consideration in the delivery of methamphetamine community-levelinterventions given that use is relatively high among this population. Yet there are few, in any,targeted on-going methamphetamine education programs delivered to young people in Australia. Inthe US, there have been reports that universal abstinence-based programs with young peoplethrough schools have had a significantly positive impact on young people’s methamphetamine use.However, critiques of this work assert that these claims should not be made and are analysisdependent [72]. Based on these critical evaluations, US scholars have argued for a move away fromabstinence-based programs, more rigorous evaluations of programs delivered to school children, andprograms that more accurately reflect the context of young people’s experiences with drugs [72].In Australia, research with young people using methamphetamine and party drugs has argued thatresponses to drug use need to take into account the meaning that specific drugs have to youngpeople and the context within which they use and experiment with drugs [31, 73]. The normalisationof drug use among some groups of young people suggest that abstinence-only approaches, andapproaches that use extreme examples of drug use, would be ineffective as they would not reflectyoung people’s experiences.Moreover, while there are broad principles that can be applied to drug education for young people,there are some specific issues in relation to methamphetamine. Many people use methamphetaminein public spaces, and do not access traditional sites of drug education such as NSPs or drugtreatment. New types of information and education strategies may be required in specific ‘drug usesettings’ such as bars and nightclubs, the workplace, schools and universities. This might involve thedevelopment of more effective ‘peer to peer’ education and information strategies in which thepractical benefits of methods to reduce harms might be communicated to young people in a way thatresonates with their own experiences [74].20