This manual conducted consultations with youth on the role and contribution of youth work to the planning, designing, and  the implementation of effective youth-centred interventions to prevent drug abuse among young people. The manual starts by addressing youth drug prevention information and continues presenting findings from youth consultations on drug prevention such as: smoking, tobacco use, alcohol use, drug use, and combined substance abuse. The manual further looks at how family, school, community-based prevention interventions are the most effective in reducing drug abuse among youth. 

It presents media-based prevention interventions such as awareness-raising campaigns on the effects of drug abuse among youth as effective because of their fidelity, scalability, and sustainability. Among the interventions for alcohol use, the manual sees school-based alcohol prevention interventions as being associated with reduced frequency of drinking among youth. For drug abuse, the manual presents that the combination of school, community, and media-based interventions based on a combination of social competence and social influence approaches through youth work in non-formal education settings, show more protective effects against drug and substance abuse among youth.

Youthhood is recognised as a period for onset of behaviours that not only affect youth health outcomes limited to this period. Unhealthy behaviours such as smoking, drinking, or illicit drug use that often start in youthhood, are closely related to increased morbidity and mortality in youth and represent major public health challenges. Poor academic performance, increased youth unemployment, poor health and well-being, accidents, suicide, mental illness; they all have drug abuse as a common contributing factor that have a major impact on the youth, families, communities, as their effects are cumulative, contributing to costly social and mental health problems. Go to the manual