Opioid Abuse Prevention, Harm Reduction, and Recovery Strategies for Colleges and High Schools

Abstract

The United States is in the midst of the worst drug crisis in its history, driven predominantly by opioid-related deaths. This paper focuses on prevention, harm reduction, and recovery strategies for geared toward high school and college students. While many drug prevention mass media campaigns and in-school programs have been implemented in recent decades, most have been generally ineffective at reducing drug use. However, campaigns that focus more on how drug use disempowers young people, and school programs that engage the community and are more interactive, have seen the most success. Future campaigns and programs to decrease opioid abuse may be effective tools if they use elements of the successful models. Additionally, harm reduction techniques to minimize the harm of opioid abuse show promise in reducing opioid overdose deaths. Naloxone has been proven to be an effective tool in preventing deaths from overdose, and less tested strategies such as Good Samaritan policies and drug checking sites or fentanyl test strips show great promise as a strategy to make opioid abuse less lethal. Finally, Collegiate Recovery Programs and sober dorms have been proven to help recovering addicts succeed academically in college while maintaining a successful recovery. The proliferation of these programs also makes it more possible for young people in recovery to attend college when they otherwise might not. Implementing these proven strategies and expanding the promising ones until future study indicates otherwise would be an important step in slowing the increase in opioid abuse and overdose deaths among high school and college students.