Before addressing secondary and tertiary drug prevention plans, Primary prevention

aims to prevent disease or delaying the age of initiation and reduces the incidence of substance use
disorders. This is done by preventing exposure to hazards that cause addiction. Examples include:
 Controlled substance legislation and enforcement
 education about healthy and safe habits (e.g., eating well, exercising regularly, not smoking, not
using drugs)
 immunization against infectious diseases.

Secondary drug prevention and tertiary drug prevention are two different approaches to addressing
drug use and addiction. Secondary drug prevention is targeted to groups who are non-users and users
that are not addicts. Tertiary includes individuals that are already suffering from drug addiction.

Secondary Drug Prevention

Secondary drug prevention refers to interventions that are aimed at individuals who are at high risk of
developing drug use or addiction. These interventions are designed to prevent drug use from becoming
a more serious problem. Prevention programs in schools are a form of secondary drug prevention, since
they are aimed at adolescents which are considered a high- risk population.

Examples of secondary drug prevention include:

- Drug education programs in schools such as Red Ribbon Week, Say No to Drugs, and D.A.R.E. teach
students about the dangers of drug use and provide them with strategies to resist peer pressure to use
drugs. Adolescents are constantly persuaded and face peer pressure from peers in experimenting with
drugs.
- Workplace drug screening programs are also a form of secondary drug prevention. This allows for
employees who are starting to use drugs to provide them access to treatment programs.
- Targeted drug counseling for individuals who have already started using drugs but are not yet addicted.

Tertiary drug prevention refers to interventions that are aimed at individuals who are already struggling
with drug addiction. These interventions are designed to prevent relapse and help individuals maintain
their recovery.

Examples of tertiary drug prevention include:

- Addiction treatment programs that help individuals overcome their addiction and develop coping skills
to avoid relapse or overdose.
- Support groups like Narcotics Anonymous that provide ongoing support and encouragement to
individuals in recovery.
- Ongoing counseling or therapy to help individuals address underlying emotional or psychological issues
that may have contributed to their addiction problem.

To conclude, the distinguishing between secondary and tertiary drug prevention is the stage of drug use
or addiction that the program targets. Secondary prevention focuses on early intervention to prevent
drug use from escalating and getting out of control. Tertiary prevention focuses on helping individuals
who are already struggling with addiction and allows them to gain sobriety and recover their lost lives.
Tertiary prevention focuses on avoiding relapse and allows them to return to society.
In general, both secondary and tertiary drug prevention efforts are important components of a
comprehensive approach to addressing drug use and addiction. By targeting drug use and addiction at
different stages, these interventions can help prevent drug use from escalating and provide individuals
with the support they need to overcome addiction and maintain their recovery.

There are issues such as substance use that produce very specific feelings and emotions,
sometimes contradictory. Fear, rejection, anguish, and compassion, are feelings that they will
probably arise when approaching this topic. Personal experiences, professional experiences,
media messages of social communication, and our particular way of being and being in the
world, constitute baggage that in the educational field is called "prior knowledge," which is
needed to confront knowledge from scientific disciplines. It is also necessary to recognize that
the various scientific disciplines constitute their own objects of study, cutting out aspects of the
phenomena as they appear in reality. That is why a complex problem like the consumption of
psychoactive substances admits multiple readings and requires an approach interdisciplinary to
understanding. Likewise, there is a confrontation between traditional paradigms and new
approaches, which deserves to be discussed on the basis of documentary information. These
themes, precisely because they are not structured in the way of the disciplines and for touch
beliefs, values, and attitudes of all, require careful treatment. To do this, we need to be clear
about some basic definitions, in such a sense it is interesting to define interventions in the field of
prevention. In this regard, the preventative is understood as a permanent construction of spaces
healthy, open, and alternative and not as a mere transmission of prescriptions and this fact
includes the prevention of problematic drug use such as a concern that in various ways reaches
the health services and is interwoven more or less explicitly in everyday life.
Hi Juana,
Like always, I find your post to be very informative, and covers all the points of the discussion
question. Like you, I also agree that the most important part of secondary prevention is the
school-based programs targeting high risk youth. I also remember growing up, how our school
constantly had law enforcement personnel, along with nurses and clinicians talk about the
dangers of drug use. I believe that worked for me, but I believe that problems associated with
alcohol were less emphasized.
I believe secondary prevention programs are important and play a crucial part of an adolescents
life. Especially adolescents that live in high-risk areas and are prone to being confronted with
substance abuse problems.
According to a recent peer-reviewed article, school-based prevention programs can positively
impact a range of social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. School-based prevention builds on
models from public health and prevention science. They are described as an integrated approach
to school-based prevention. These models leverage the most effective structural and content
components of social-emotional and behavioral health prevention interventions. These programs
are extremely important, and should is taken into consideration as part of an adolescents
education and middle school curriculum.
Also, I have also learned that “social reintegration” programs are part of the tertiary prevention
programs. These programs are in hopes of having substance abuse patients reintegrate and be
part of society. Programs like, Turning Point and Victory Outreach are programs that facilitate
to patients who are in the last phase of treatment.
Secondary prevention is based on an early diagnosis and the uptake of timely and appropriate
treatment of various health disorders. It is carried out to make a diagnosis that allows early
identification of damage and treatment early. The various psychological treatments, therapeutic
communities, and harm reduction programs for drug addicts are examples of this type of
prevention. At school, psycho-pedagogical offices can fulfill this role when they make referrals
to psychological treatment in students who are living in a psychological conflict that deserves
such derivation. Once problems are identified, tertiary prevention seeks rehabilitation and
social reintegration. Physical, occupational, and psychological therapy try to get people to adapt
to their situation and to be and feel valuable to themselves and to society. The so-called “social
reintegration” programs, developed in some therapeutic communities for addicts as the last phase
of treatment, are an example of this type of prevention. The school also carries out activities that
can be placed in this category, when a student who is doing treatment for drug use so that he can
be incorporated into school or so that he can continue on it the likelihood of harm or an
undesirable result, such as a disease or a habit such as a drug addiction. Risk factors are related
to the possibility of developing a disease, but are not enough to cause it. For example, for
problematic drug use among young people, risk factors are non-continent family groups, the lack
of possibilities of insertion in the labor market, school dropout, etc.
Secondary Prevention example: It would promote and educate people on issues about how to
protect their health in places such as schools and other sources like media or television.