Innovations in adolescent substance abuse intervention

Adolescent alcohol and other drug abuse is an important public health concern, and the past two decades has seen a dramatic increase in the demand for interventions to address substance use problems among teenagers. This demand has led to the development of multiple primary, secondary, and tertiary substance abuse prevention programs, some of which have little theoretical basis and most of which currently operate in the absence of data supporting their effectiveness. Very recently, there has been increased emphasis on the goal of developing and testing theoretically based and empirically supported intervention approaches for adolescent substance abuse. We describe five ongoing research programs devoted to meeting this goal. The background and rationale for each research program are discussed, and preliminary efficacy data concerning the specific interventions are presented.