A community prevention intervention to reduce youth from inhaling and ingesting harmful legal products

Youth use of harmful legal products, including inhaling or ingesting everyday household products, prescription drugs, and over-the-counter drugs, constitutes a growing health problem for American society. As such, a single targeted approach to preventing such a drug problem in a community is unlikely to be sufficient to reduce use and abuse at the youth population level. Therefore, the primary focus of this article is on an innovative, comprehensive, community-based prevention intervention. The intervention described here is based upon prior research that has a potential of preventing youth use of alcohol and other legal products. It builds upon three evidence-based prevention interventions from the substance abuse field: community mobilization, environmental strategies, and school-based prevention education intervention. The results of a feasibility project are presented and the description of a planned efficacy trial is discussed.