Long-term effects of drugs education in primary school

The long-term effects of a drug education programme (Project Charlie) taugh t in primary school were examined. Children who had received weekly lessons for a year in primary school, when they were aged nine and ten, were follo wed up four years later in their secondary schools. Three samples were stud ied. In the first (Subset 1), children were randomly assigned to interventi on (n = 20) or control conditions (n = 14) and pre-tested before some recei ved the drugs education programme. They were followed up immediately post-i ntervention and again as they approached fourteen years of age. In Subset 2 , children who had been taught Project Charlie (n = 21) were compared with matched controls attending the same secondary school (n = 21) in their firs t year of secondary school and again at age fourteen years. In Subset 3 the Project Charlie children were compared at final post-test with all their c lassmates. By the time the children were thirteen or fourteen, the Project Charlie group were significantly more able to resist peer pressure (Subsets 1 & 2 - data not collected for Subset 3), had significantly more negative attitudes towards drugs (Subsets 1 & 3), and were significantly less likely to have smoked cigarettes (Subsets 1 & 3) or to have used an illegal drug (Subset 3).