Preventing adolescent drug use: the development, design and implementationof the first year of 'NE Choices'

Illicit drug use by adolescents in the UK is of major concern. Recent surve ys suggest that increasing proportions of young people are using drugs, tha t the number of different drugs used has increased, and that young people a re experimenting at a younger age (Roberts et al., 1995). As part of its re sponse to these problems, the UK Government established the Home Office Dru gs Prevention Initiative (DPI), a nationwide programme of interventions com bining central guidance and local initiatives, and designed to establish be st practice in the field (Home Office, 1996). `NE Choices' was one of the l argest interventions in the programme, a 3-year multi-component social infl uences intervention targeting 13-16-year-old school children in the north-e ast of England. Following a 3-year development and pilot phase, the interve ntion began its full implementation in January 1997 and ran until April 199 9. A longitudinal quasi-experimental study measured drug use behaviour befo re, during and after the programme, while process and impact evaluation stu dies examined delivery and immediate response. This paper describes the dev elopment, design and delivery of the programme's first year, the `Year Nine intervention'.