"Because of my taste in the current
I don't know what I came to look for,
and without feeling it, it has carried me
the current to the sea."
Augusto Ferrán.
Along with tobacco, alcohol is the drug with the highest and most serious incidence in our country, followed at a certain distance by the abuse of certain psychotropic drugs and finally by illegal drug addictions. In the latter, a decrease in heroin consumption and an increase in the consumption, especially in recent years, of cocaine and so-called "designer drugs" is observed. The current trend towards poly-drug use is noteworthy.
When talking about the "drug problem", the emphasis continues to be placed on psychoactive substances that are illegally sold, forgetting, on the one hand, that the consumption of tobacco and alcohol is the gateway to the consumption of other substances and that this consumption is related to the main causes of death in Western societies; and on the other hand, it is forgotten that alcohol is the drug that creates the most problems in our society and that its consumption has increased spectacularly among our young people on weekends in recent years.
The World Health Organization (WHO) itself calls for the need for advanced techniques to influence mainly population groups particularly exposed to drug dependence (youth and adolescents). For the WHO, along with legal and social measures, educational measures are the basis of preventive work. Educational measures that should aim at a change in attitudes towards drugs and their consumption.
The reform and improvement of the educational system and the development of comprehensive education programs in schools that avoid differentiated treatment of drugs are, without a doubt, important strategies to develop and that can demonstrate great potential when influencing the attitudes and behaviors of young people, in relation, also, to the problem of drugs. However, these non-specific actions must be complemented with specific actions at critical ages (especially with respect to alcohol and tobacco), because we know how difficult it is for young people when they are in a real situation of supply, in which they have to make a determination, use the information they have in the desirable sense, from the point of view of health.
Young people have their first contact with drugs in an age range of 12-17 years, and the drugs used in the first contact are tobacco and alcohol. Therefore, preventive work must begin before that age, obviously with a non-specific approach. Health Education is the ideal framework to generate positive attitudes in the youngest children towards maintaining health and "parent training" to help the personal development of young people. Training parents with a focus on the prevention and treatment of childhood behavior problems can be very useful, using strategies through which parents can modify their children's behavior at home.
Only if teachers assume that they are primarily educators, that they have to act as tutors, understanding by this that they have to stimulate and guide the young person in that insecure and hesitant development process that they go through at those ages, only if they worry about acquiring the ability to influence that maturation process will they be able to prevent drug use.
A constantly educating school is preventive in itself. The quality of teaching and the progressive and continuous improvement of the educational system constitute, in themselves, elements that enhance the acquisition of healthy values, attitudes and behaviors, thus preventing drug addiction. And as the poet said. "Get up if you fall, / and before walking again, / look where you have fallen / and put a sign there."
Francisco Arias Solis
