Program Jump Starts Drug Avoidance

By Leslie Lang

NEW YORK (Reuters) A new program of highintensity classroom
group activities shows promise for reducing marijuana and alcohol
use among sensationseeking teens, researchers report.

Studies show the substance abuse prevention and lifeskills program
called ``Jump Start'' may also help increase the perceived risk of
dangers associated with substance abuse among highrisk teens.

``This last finding is important because we know that when the
perceived risk of danger from drug use goes down, substance abuse
can go up,'' said Dr. Nancy Grant Harrington, assistant professor
of communications at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

Harrington, who also is with Kentucky's Center for Prevention
Research, told Reuters that the Jump Start program arose from an
attempt to apply the principles of designing media messages for the
classroom.

She said her coauthor, Dr. Lewis Donohew, has been designing media
messages antidrug, televised public service announcements
over the last decade to reach ``highsensation seekers''
``people who have a great need for excitement and novelty in their
lives,'' Harrington explained. ``When tested, these are people who
would strongly agree with statements such as 'I would like to go
skydiving'; 'I would like to go to a party where everybody has a
full drink'; 'I would like to try new foods.'''

``The ones we're really concerned with are the people who like to
party too hard and try the drugs,'' Harrington said. ''These are
the people who are more likely to use drugs than others.''

Harrington's earlier studies found that highsensation seekers pay
more attention to media messages with certain characteristics such
as novelty, suspense, fastpace, loud music, and antisocial humor.
She and her colleagues created Jump Start using the same
principles, deciding to target AfricanAmerican youths ``because
most of our (previous) research had looked at Caucasians,''
Harrington notes.

The study ultimately recruited 289 adolescents, aged 14 to 15, from
the roster of a summer youth employment program in Cincinnati,
Ohio. All were at increased risk for substance abuse because their
home neighborhoods were rife with such abuse, as well as with
higher rates of violence and school drop outs.

Students met four hours a day, five days per week, one week each
summer for two years in classrooms at the University of Cincinnati.
Program activities emphasized the impact of peer, family, media,
and sensationseeking influences on behavior. The program also
taught decisionmaking and valuesclarification skills, advocated
sports and other ``prosocial'' activities over substance abuse,
and emphasized education and career.

``We found effects for liquor and marijuana in both years of the
program,'' Harrington said. ``Basically, substance use went down
overall, and it went down enough for the highsensation seekers for
both liquor and marijuana so that the differences between
highsensation seekers and lowsensation seekers were
neutralized.''

``The program is promising, but I think we need a lot more work in
trying to make an interpersonal classroom setting higher in
sensation value,'' Harrington said. ``An even stronger focus on
values would also be important.''

The results of a national survey released Tuesday by Columbia
University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse in
New York City reveal that marijuana is a favorite substance of
abuse among teenagers, second only to alcohol, and that 24% of
teens surveyed said they could buy marijuana within an hour.

SOURCE: Health Education & Behavior (1997;24(5):568586)