The drug-taker of today is aware of the possible consequences of his/her drug-taking. She/he has seen friends on ‘bad trips’, and thus knows of others who have been precipitated into mental-illness. She/he is aware, but she/he is not concerned. “It does not matter”.
They view drugs as very positive, related to “feeling good” and “having a good time”. The main question is what causes young people’s lack of concern? There has been a marked difference between young people of today and those of yesterday in their world view. There is a lack of concern about drug-taking amongst today’s youth.
This lack of concern, as he sees it, is often the exaggeration of an attitude that was latent in the mind of youth before she/he actually started on drugs. This could be an expression of the “emptiness-of-life” as youth sees it around him/her. To him/her, life and our machine- age industrial society, appear empty of human-values. From the late 1980s, the problem of drug abuse is no longer dominantly a “foreign-countries” problem, nor is it an issue to be brushed aside in Tanzania.
Education programs that attempt to deter young people from substance use and/or abuse have typically fallen short of achieving the desired results. Lack of evaluation-studies of education-efforts in the country makes it difficult to see the impact of preventive education. Nevertheless, knowledge-based prevention programs continue to flourish despite substantial evidence that contraindicates continuation.
The reason why these prevention-programs have not been successful is challenging. One probable explanation is related to the fact that the “theoretical” underpinnings of most problems are difficult to identify, and when they do exist, they are typically a major source of weakness.
For instance, the theory that drives knowledge-based prevention approaches postulates that participants, when exposed to information and facts concerning the possibility of legal sanctions, known health risks, and so on, will be less likely to consume illicit substances when given a choice.