“The mission of the Heffter Research Institute is to conduct research of the highest scientific quality with psychedelic substances in order to contribute to a greater understanding of the mind, leading to the improvement of the human condition, and the alleviation of suffering.”

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
“The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is a membership-based non-profit research and educational organization with about 1800 members. We assist scientists to design, fund, obtain approval for and report on studies into the healing and spiritual potentials of MDMA, psychedelic drugs and marijuana.”

Monitoring the Future
“Monitoring the Future is an ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American secondary school students, college students, and young adults.”

“Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation is one of the nation’s preeminent independent, nonprofit organizations merging scientific knowledge and proven practice to create solutions that improve the health, safety and well-being of individuals, communities, nations, and the world.”

“ReCAPP provides practical tools and information to effectively reduce sexual risk-taking behaviors.” This site also contains harm-reduction ideas for drug education: “Helping Young People Make Healthy Decisions About Drugs: Risk Taking, Harm Reduction, and Non-Judgment”

“While we stress the value of abstinence, we need a fallback strategy for those youth who still say ‘maybe’ or ‘sometimes’ or ‘yes’ to drugs. We need a strategy that embraces safety as its bottom line.”

Alcohol,Tobacco & Other Drugs

“A California corporation engaged in research, publishing, and educational services.”

“Stanton Peele has been investigating, thinking, and writing about addiction since 1969.”

“Partners in training & education.”

The Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
“Established in 1967 by David E. Smith, M.D., founder and medical director of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics, the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs is an authoritative quarterly periodical containing timely information of a multidisciplinary nature surrounding the use and abuse of psychoactive drugs.”

Journal of Drug Education
“For over three decades, the Journal of Drug Education has provided a medium for the discussion of all aspects of drug education.”

Journal of Drug Education and Awareness
“The Journal of Drug Education & Awareness is a quarterly peer-reviewed academically-oriented journal devoted to the study of various misused and, in particular, abused drugs and their effects on global society.”

Drug Use Among Youth: The Prevalence, Health Problems and Possible Solutions.
Antonia Montoya. PartySmart Report 2004–1 (December, 2004).

A Wise and Effective Approach to Drugs and Youth.
Charles Bush, Headmaster, Chamisa Mesa High School, Taos, New Mexico.
“Let me begin by stating that I believe that the Chamisa Mesa faculty approach the thorny issue of drug use by teenagers in the wisest, best informed, and most effective way possible. Our policies and perspectives are designed to have the greatest possible influence toward a healthy life, and to support individual choices by our students to avoid the potential harm that can occur from the use of psychoactive or mind-affecting substances. This extensive discussion of the topic is essential to get a clear perspective on our responsibilities as elders to work with young people effectively regarding the complex and unavoidable choices they will face concerning their own relationship with drugs. Their choices, like our own, can have important implications for the quality of their life. I have written for all of us, youth and elders, in order to provide a foundation for further continuing dialogue.”

Can Science-Based Prevention Deliver the Goods in the Real World?
Rodney Skager, Prevention File, 13(1), 11-14 (1998).

Communicating with your teenager about drugs.
The Australian Drug Foundation

The “Cure” for Adolescent Drug Abuse: Worse than the Problem?
Stanton Peele, Journal of Counseling and Development, 65, 23-24 (1986).

Don’t Panic! A Parent’s Guide To Understanding and Preventing Alcohol and Drug Abuse.
Stanton Peele and Marianne Apostolides, 1996.
“Don’t Panic offers parents a non-alarmist approach for understanding and dealing with adolescent substance use. In the place of panic, this pamphlet provides a sensible, human, and responsible perspective on raising children in a world where they confront drugs – whether legal or illegal – every day.”

Does the D.A.R.E. Program Work?
No. There is no evidence to support it: Donald R. Lynam
Yes. D.A.R.E. is helping to stem drug abuse: Glenn Levant
Speakout, American Teacher, October, 1999.

Drug Free Schools (Audio File)
Beau Boughamer, All Things Considered, National Public Radio, May 17, 2000.
“About half the kids in the Chambersburg Middle School in Pennsylvania have volunteered to take drug tests as part of a local program that gives drug-free kids discounts at local stores and preferential treatment with local employers. A quarter of the high school students also participate in the program, which requires random drug tests.”

The Economic Costs of D.A.R.E.
Edward M. Shepard III, Institute of Industrial Relations, Research Paper Number 22, September 2001 (Updated November 2001)
“This paper presents preliminary estimates of the economic costs of the D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program using information provided by D.A.R.E. America, the U.S. Department of Justice, several state annual reports, and investigative reports from communities and cities across the country.”

Drug Mistreatment.
Jake Ginsky, Mother Jones Magazine, February 18, 2000.
“Tens of thousands of American teenagers are forced into drug treatment programs each year by schools, parents, or the courts -- despite not having any serious drug problem.”

Drug Prevention Placebo: How DARE Wastes Time, Money, and Police.
Jeff Elliot, Reason, Mar. 1995, 14-21.

The 1999 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD).
This series of surveys is carried out as a collaborative project of 30 European countries. ESPAD is charged with collecting comparable data on alcohol, tobacco and drug use among 15-16 year old students. The Report compares these data with Monitoring the Future tenth grade data, with the long-term goal of comparing trends between countries.

Harm Reduction: An Emerging New Paradigm for Drug Education.
David F. Duncan, Dr.P.H., C.A.S., Thomas Nicholson, Ph.D., M.P.H., Patrick Clifford, Ph.D., Wesley Hawkins, Ph.D., Rick Petosa, Ph.D., Journal of Drug Education, 1994, 24(4), 281-290.
“Harm reduction is a new paradigm now emerging in the field of drug education. This strategy recognizes that people always have and always will use drugs and, therefore, attempts to minimize the potential hazards associated with drug use rather than the use itself. The rationale for a harm reduction strategy is presented, followed by an example of the kind of needs assessment which may be needed for planning a harm reduction strategy.”

High School Students Talk about Drug Education Programs.
Joel H. Brown and students, Newsletter of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 1996-97, 35-36.
“Interviews with high school students about what is needed in a drug education program.”

In Their Own Voices.
Joel H. Brown, et al., Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, report for the California State Board of Education, March 1995.
“In the last 20 years, few studies conducted inside schools have explored how drug education programs are developed and delivered. Many did not take into account how the recipients of such services – students – were affected by such programs. This was realized in the following report, an evaluation of one of largest drug education efforts in the United States, the California Drug, Alcohol, and Tobacco Education (DATE) Program.”

Just Say Know: New Directions in Drug Education.
Listen to recordings of this October 1999 conference held in San Francisco and sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance.

Kids, Drugs, and Drug Education: A Harm Reduction Approach.
A 1996 policy statement by TLC-West Director, Marsha Rosenbaum.

The Partnership Ad Campaign.
Daniel Forbes, The Drug Policy Letter, Summer 1998.
“This article, from the Summer 1998 issue of The Drug Policy Letter, takes a look at the merits of the Partnership for a Drug Free America’s media campaign.”

Preventing Drug Abuse: What Do We Know?
Dean R. Gerstein and Lawrence W. Green, Editors; Committee on Substance Abuse Prevention Research, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council, National Academy Press, 1993.
“As the nation’s drug crisis has deepened, public and private agencies have invested huge sums of money in prevention efforts. Are the resulting programs effective? What do we need to know to make them more effective? This book provides a comprehensive overview on what we know about drug abuse prevention and its effectiveness.”

Project DARE: No Effects at 10-Year Follow-Up.
Donald R. Lynam, et al., Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology Vol. 67, No. 4, August 1999, 590-593.
“The present study examined the impact of Project DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), a widespread drug-prevention program, 10 years after administration. A total of 1,002 individuals who in 6th grade had either received DARE or a standard drug- education curriculum, were reevaluated at age 20. Few differences were found between the 2 groups in terms of actual drug use, drug attitudes, or self-esteem, and in no case did the DARE group have a more successful outcome than the comparison group. Possible reasons why DARE remains so popular, despite the lack of documented efficacy, are offered.”

On Reinventing Drug Education, Especially for Adolescents.
Rodney Skager, presented at the 2nd International Conference on Drugs & Young People, Melbourne, Australia, 4-6 April, 2001.
“Substance use has for a considerable time been normalized among mainstream American adolescents. The concept of normalization goes beyond mere statistics. It speaks to the culture in which most American adolescents live. It means that users as well as many non-users accept experience with drugs as normal. It means that a substantial majority of older teens believe that most of their same age peers have tried marijuana and that student leaders and other social icons have tried it and that many currently use it. Substance use is firmly embedded in the teen social scene, part of the shared experience of both users and non-users.”

Researching School-Based Drug Education: Drug Education and Democracy [In]action.
Joel Brown, Newsletter of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 1996-97, pp. 28-34.
“The researchers’ findings in the DATE study were revealed precisely because they focused on the students’ voices. Few if any large evaluations of such programs have been oriented in this way. And what effects were found? Random survey results from over 5,000 adolescents showed that only 15% felt strongly and positively affected by their drug education by the time they reached high school. Many students believe that they are being presented with only one correct decision: a decision not to use substances. While drug education may take up only a small proportion of the educational curricula, the students tell us that it has a disproportionately negative effect on adult credibility.”

The ReconsiDer Quarterly, 1(4) (Winter, 2001-2002).
“This Drug Education issue features articles by Mike Roona, Ted Sheperd, Marsha Rosenbaum, Rod Skager, as well as an interview with Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson.”

Report of the Task Force on Effective Drug Abuse Prevention to the King County Bar Association Board of Trustees.
August 15, 2001
“The Task Force on Effective Drug Abuse Prevention was established as part of the King County Bar Association’s Drug Policy Project to study and report on current drug abuse prevention research, policies and programs. This report considers why young people begin to use alcohol, tobacco and other drugs and highlights measures that have been shown to prevent, delay or reduce the harm from such use, including some noteworthy examples developed in Washington State.”

Safety First: A Reality-Based Approach to Teens, Drugs and Drug Education.
Marsha Rosenbaum, Drug Policy Alliance, 2002.

School-Based Drug Education: Realistic Aims Or Certain Failure.
Geoff Munro, Director, Centre for Youth Drug Studies, Australian Drug Foundation.
“This is an edited version of a paper delivered by the author at a seminar convened by the Centre for Youth Drug Studies at the Australian Drug Foundation on 11 March 1997 and at the 8th International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm, Paris, 26 March 1997.”

School Drug Education: Policy Position Paper for the Australian Professional Society on Alcohol and Other Drugs.
Cecile McKeown, The APSAD Newsletter, 3(2). Adopted by the APSAD Council, 6 April 1998.

The TAOS Report
Report of the Committee to Review the Tobacco, Alcohol and Other Substance (TAOS) Curriculum, Ashfield-Plainfield Regional School District, Sanderson Academy School Council, June 6, 1994.
“This is the report of the parent/teacher/community committee appointed by the Sanderson Academy School Council in January of this year to review and evaluate Sanderson’s Tobacco Alcohol and Other Substance (TAOS) curriculum.”

Tuning Out and Turning On: Student Response to Contemporary Drug Education. (Audio File)
Joel H. Brown, TLC Drug Policy Series Seminar, New York City, December 12, 1995.
“Dr. Joel Brown, senior scientist and principal investigator with Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, discusses the Institute’s three-year study ‘In Their Own Voices,’ which found that current anti-drug programs in schools are ineffective and even detrimental to students. Dr. Brown discusses national implications of this research and present alternative approaches to drug education.”

What do we tell the kids?
Newsletter of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 7(1), 27 (Winter, 1996-1997).
“Contains several articles relevant to drug education and family discussion of psychedelics and marijuana.”

What Have We Learned From Drug Education?
Niall Coggins, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm, Paris, 1996.
“The purpose of this presentation is to review the lessons that can be learned from the literature on evaluation of drug education, with a focus on primary prevention (Coggans and Watson 1995). In the context of drug education, primary prevention is usually taken to mean preventing young people from getting involved with drugs; that is, preventing onset of drug use. The implications of a primary prevention goal for drug education will be drawn out and discussed during this presentation. Given that, more often than not, drug education is judged against the criterion of abstinence, one of the important issues here is whether abstinence is a realistic objective for drug education.”