A Review on School Based Interventions for Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs (ATOD) in the United States: Can Developing Countries in Africa Adopt these Preventive Programs Based on ATOD Approaches?
Stephen E. D. Nsimba, and Amos. Y. Massele
Substance abuse problems have been a major concern of societies all over the world, including the United States, during last five decades. In the United States, the substance abuse epidemic has been changing its characteristics as to the major drugs of abuse and the populations abusing them and the overall magnitude of the problem can be best described as fluctuating only.
Thus, a declining trend in late 1980’s was reversed in early 1990’s. Currently, for last decade, we do observe a slow declining trend and can only hope to maintain it or accelerate it further. Despite this the prevalence of life time drug use is quite high 21%, 38%, and 50% among 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students according to the Monitoring the Future Survey in 2005 [1].
