A drug prevention program for sixth-graders can help prevent them from using methamphetamine years later, a new study shows.

“We think that this makes a really important point about the power of prevention to address a critically important drug problem,” Dr. Richard L. Spoth of Iowa State University in Ames told Reuters Health. “It’s really a big problem, and I think we have a way of dealing with it.”

According to 2004 figures, more than 6 percent of high school seniors have used methamphetamine at least once, Spoth and his team point out in their report in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. However, there has been no research on how effective drug prevention programs are in preventing kids from using meth.

In their two-part study, the researchers tested the effectiveness of prevention programs designed to help improve parent-child communications and assist kids in building life skills, such as solving problems and dealing with peer pressure. “These interventions are fairly brief and they don’t cost that much,” Spoth noted.

The first part of the study involved 667 sixth-graders at 33 rural public schools. The children were assigned to participate in the Iowa Strengthening Families Program, the Preparing for the Drug Free Years program, or a comparison group that did not participate in a program.

The second part involved 679 seventh-graders from 36 rural public schools. These children were assigned to a revised Iowa Strengthening Families Program given with or without the Life Skills Training program, or the Life Skills Training program alone.

None of the children in the first part of the study who participated in the Iowa Strengthening Families Program had tried meth when they were followed up 6.5 years later, compared with 3.5 percent of the children in the comparison group. However, there were no significant differences in meth use between the comparison group and the Preparing for the Drug Free Years program group.

In the second part of the study, kids who participated in any one or a combination of prevention programs were less likely to have tried or to be currently using meth 4.5 years compared with the children in the comparison group.

In an interview, Spoth pointed out that all of the interventions in the current study have been rigorously tested and shown to be effective in preventing other types of substance use. Researchers have long understood that such programs work better when they’re engaging, fun, and light on the lectures, he added.

“There’s just a minimum amount of lecturing, there’s a lot of demonstration of skills and coaching in skills, that sort of activity,” he explained. It’s also essential that such proven programs be implemented with careful attention to quality, he added.

Based on the current findings, Spoth estimates that in a classroom of 200 high school seniors who participated in the prevention program as middle schoolers, just five would have tried meth, compared with 15 in a classroom of 200 kids who hadn’t participated in the program.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, September 2006.