Parent, family, and extended family are recognized by research to have a very significant impact on the adolescent's intention to use and actual use of drugs. Young adolescents recognize the family as a very powerful influence on their lives. If family is this powerful an influence, then it follows that our messages directed to youth most certainly need to come from the source that they are most influenced by-their family. Many parents are unaware of how their parenting styles or their drug-taking behaviors influence their youth.

Prevention programming must send the family, including the youth, a message that has four important components:

• The family is the most important factor in a child's intention to use drugs, selection of friends who may or may not use drugs, and decision to use or not use drugs. Furthermore, when parents monitor the youth's behavior and use good communication patterns, the youth is less likely to use drugs.

• Using alcohol and other drugs can cause serious health problems. These substances affect the way we think, they slow down reaction time, and they slow down memory recording, selection, and retrieval. Drugs affect the decisions we make, and they disable our capacity to make judgments.

• The fewer substances you use, the fewer your children will use, and the more love and attention and care you give your own family and other children, the stronger the resiliency factors you are building in those children.

• There are many reasons, other than family, why youth may use substances. Certainly, most adolescents with serious drug use problems have multiple risk factors and few protective factors at work in their lives. Successful intervention programs must recognize this fact, and address all the domains-individual, family, school, and community-that can help to ameliorate risk factors and accentuate the resiliency factors for each individual.

Parenting IS Prevention Training of Trainers Workshop, 1998	SAMHSA

Office of National Drug Control Policy