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Innovative medicine education in Australia: How does Positive Choices change the school environment?
In today's society, drug education is becoming increasingly important. In the face of widespread use of psychoactive substances, educational institutions need to adopt effective educational programs to guide young people to make rational decisions. Australia’s innovative medicines education platform, Positive Choices, is one such effort that aims to reduce medicines-related harms by providing evidence-based educational resources.
The original intention of drug education is to provide the necessary information, guidance and resources to help people better cope with the risks of drug use.
Traditional drug education can be divided into two main models: prohibition education and harm reduction education. Abstinence-oriented education emphasizes avoiding all drug use, while harm reduction-oriented education accepts the inevitability of drug use and is committed to reducing the harm that may occur during use. Australia’s “Positive Choices” platform is based on this concept of harm reduction.
The limitations of prohibitive drug education
Abstinence-based drug education has been around since the late 19th century, but studies have shown it has limited effectiveness in preventing drug use among teens. Many school abstinence programs, such as D.A.R.E., have failed to show significant results and in some cases have even led to increased use among teens.
Many abstinence-based programs fail to effectively reduce drug use among adolescents and may actually promote drug use among some students, a systematic review finds.
Against this backdrop, the Australian government has kept pace with the times with its National Drug Education Strategy (NDES) and launched the “Positive Choices” platform, which provides interactive harm reduction education resources to help young people develop correct drug concepts.
Positive Choices’ innovative approach
Positive Choices integrates existing drug education resources and provides research from the National Center for Drug and Alcohol Research that shows these resources can reduce drug- and alcohol-related harms and improve students' well-being. The system serves 750,000 students across Australia each year, providing them with the necessary knowledge and skills to meet the challenges that life may present.
These prevention programs work to motivate youth to make positive life decisions and emphasize resisting peer pressure to increase youth autonomy.
In addition, some non-profit organizations, such as Life Education Australia, are also conducting similar drug education work to further strengthen the impact on teenagers, which shows that society's attention to drug education is gradually increasing.
Future development and challenges
However, despite the success of programs like Positive Choices, trends in drug use remain worrisome. According to a 2021 survey, only 60% of American teenagers said they saw drug and alcohol prevention information in school, showing a gap in school drug education.
Effective drug education requires the use of more engaging and interactive learning strategies so that adolescents can better understand and follow the educational content.
Combined with past research, most scholars believe that future drug education requires professional training and support to improve teachers' teaching effectiveness and ensure the uniform implementation of drug courses.
Given the complexity of adolescent drug use, how will the success or failure of the Positive Choices platform affect future drug education in Australia?
