Preventing Marijuana Use through Establishing Conservative Norms in Adolescents

Every one out of seven 10th graders is a habitual marijuana smoker in the United States. Shaped by socio-cultural values, attitudes, and beliefs, teenagers perceive that use is pervasive and therefore underwhelm the health and legal consequences of marijuana consumption. This promising practice seeks to reason with adolescents that marijuana use is not as high as they may perceive it to be and establish conservative norms about marijuana use.

The promising practice of establishing conservative norms is a primary intervention. The program seeks to ensure that adolescents are not exposed to the harms of marijuana smoke and are able to make educated decisions on the harms of the drug. It seeks to eliminate any beliefs an adolescent has made based on the media, peers, or other factors and plant a seed of truth in their minds on the reality of marijuana. Program specialists teach curriculum which include an overview on drugs, consequences, homework, surveys on peer use, and class discussions. The entirety of the program lasts ten sessions.

To prevent use of marijuana altogether in adolescents by establishing conservative norms.

A randomized control trial with one control group and three experimental groups was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of establishing conservative norms through Normative Education to reduce marijuana use amongst adolescents and teenagers. The control program consisted of Resistance Training. Of the 3,011 students that were first gathered for this study, 2,416 participated for the entire duration of the experiment.

The study results indicate that the Normative Education intervention had a greater, more positive influence on decreasing use than the Resistance Training program for all three substances (p-value < 0.01). Since each use item was dichotomized, the results were interpreted based on the program's impact on incidence and prevalence. There was a 62.4% decrease in the incidence of drunkenness when comparing non-Normative Education classrooms to those that received Normative Education. There was also a decrease in the incidence of students ever using alcohol, which was reflected by a 22.5% reduction, and the prevalence of weekly alcohol consumption had a 45.1% decrease in relative incidence. Furthermore, the incidence of alcohol-related problems was reduced by 87.5%. When examining the least-squares means, it is seen that the Combined program is the most effective while the Resistance Training Only program is the least effective. The Normative Education program also proved to lower the relative incidence of marijuana use by 64.5%, as well as to decrease the rates of cigarette consumption.