Apples for Health- Teen drug education reduces risky sex

Teen drug education reduces risky sex

SANTA MONICA, Calif., May 1 (UPI) -- School-based drug education programs for adolescents can have a positive impact on sexual behavior and curb substance abuse, U.S. researchers said.

Lead author Phyllis Ellickson, a researcher at the Rand Corp., a non-profit research organization, said the study found young adults who had been exposed to a popular drug abuse prevention program as adolescents were less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior five to seven years later.

The study provides the strongest evidence to date that drug abuse prevention programs can also curb risky sexual practices in young adulthood, Ellickson said.

"The lessons these young people learned about how to avoid drug and alcohol abuse appears to have had a positive impact on their sexual behavior as well," Ellickson said in a statement.

The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that youth exposed to a drug abuse education program were significantly less likely as young adults to either engage in sex with multiple partners or to have unprotected sex because of drug and alcohol use than their peers who had not received the training.

The Rand Health study tracked the experiences of 1,901 unmarried 21-year-olds who took part in a randomized controlled trial of Project ALERT, a drug use prevention program for middle school students developed by Rand.