Young people’s views on drug education in schools: implications for health promotion and health education

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractGovernment policy places strong emphasis on the value of school-based drug education, and offers guidelines around the development of appropriate drug education. This paper is based on research conducted with 575 young people via a questionnaire survey which sought to obtain their views on what constitutes effective drug education. Findings included strong support from young people for school-based drug education; suggested roles for parents, ex-drug users, friends and youth workers in drug education; a desire for clear facts about drugs and drug use in order to enable young people to make informed decisions; support for the use of interactive teaching methods; and the need for drug education to start in primary school. These findings highlight the potential value of involving young people in the development of drug education in order to ensure maximum engagement in and learning from school-based drug education programmes. Electronic accessThe current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

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