Why Prevention is Critical
by Phil Mooring
I had just completed my undergraduate work and had accepted a position working as a juvenile court counselor. I was assigned to work with sixteen year old Joseph and his family. Soon after picking up the case, Joseph and three friends ran away from home and headed for Atlantic Beach, arriving about 8 p.m. on a Monday evening in September. They drove to a rather secluded spot and Joseph started inhaling the spray from an aerosol deodorant. His friends tried to get him to stop, but he didn’t, and within just minutes he collapsed. His friends drove him to a fishing pier and called an ambulance, but Joseph was pronounced dead on arrival at the local hospital.
So, early on in my career I learned that the old adage, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” really is true, and that Benjamin Franklin had it right when he said, “It’s easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.” And I’m sure that it was from Dr. Johnnie McLeod, a North Carolina pioneer in substance abuse prevention, whom I first heard the oft repeated story about the community who had to keep patching up people who drove off a steep cliff outside of town until one day someone suggested that rather than spending so much money on helping the injured, perhaps they should allocate some money to build a barricade to prevent people from driving off the cliff in the first place.
As a career addiction professional having worked in inpatient and outpatient treatment settings and having attempted to devote time and resources to prevention, I believe prevention is critical for six reasons.
- Conventional wisdom and tradition.
Humans possess a natural instinct to protect and prevent harm and suffering. That’s why, just recently, a by-stander left his own two children standing on a subway platform in New York City to save the life of a young man who, because of a medical problem had fallen into the path of an oncoming train. That’s the reason we teach our children to look both ways before crossing a street, and we watch them so carefully when they’re at play. We want to protect them from behaviors that will bring them harm.
- Research demonstrates that prevention works.
Prevention science has made great progress in recent years. Prevention is no longer about what we think works, what we like to do, or what has worked well somewhere else. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has published a research based guide that outlines fifteen science based prevention principles. We have objective data that clearly demonstrates that substance abuse prevention works.
- Prevention makes good business sense.
Offering prevention services and supporting prevention services makes good business sense for all providers of addiction services. Treatment and prevention providers benefit from actively working to prevent addiction. Treatment providers who support prevention services gain the respect of the community they serve for their effort to create a safer and healthier environment for all concerned.
- The return on the investment is significant.
Research has demonstrated that preventing substance abuse and other problem behaviors can have a net benefit after accounting for costs. One study (Pentz 1998) found that for every dollar spent of prevention, communities could save from $4 to $5 in costs for treatment and counseling. If we are really serious about wanting to reduce admissions to state hospitals and local emergency rooms, reduce prison overcrowding, reducing the rates of HIV/AIDS and teen pregnancies, increasing school performance and decreasing school drop out rates, then we must elevate prevention to the preeminent place it deserves.
- Moral and ethical obligation.
Knowing that alcoholism ranks third among the nation’s preventable causes of death, and that alcoholism and other drug addiction leads to ruined lives, shattered dreams, unintentional debilitating injuries, violence and crime, addiction professionals have an obligation to not only help the hurting, but to prevent human suffering and loss of life. Someone has said, “The foremost responsibility of any society is to nurture and protect its children.”
- It really is a matter of life and death.
“When the husband dies, the wife is called a widow. When the wife dies, the husband is called a widower. When parents die, the children are called orphans. But when a child dies, there is no word in our culture or language to describe the surviving parents because the grief and sorrow are too great for words.” ~Anonymous
Talk to any parent who has lost a child to alcohol or drug abuse and sadly, you don’t have to look far to find such a parent. They will tell you that preventing underage drinking and illicit drug use really is a matter of life and death.
Prevention is not easy. CADCA (Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America) Chairman and CEO, Art Dean, who served thirty-one years in the US Army, saw combat in Vietnam and Saudi Arabia, rose to the rank of Major General, served with the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, commanded Army units from Company to Brigade and served ten years at the Department of Army Headquarters in Washington, DC, was recently quoted as saying that prevention is the hardest job he’s ever had. Those of us working in prevention would have to agree. It’s not easy, but it is important.
As addiction professionals, we must continue to advocate for prevention, we must create prevention partnerships and alliances, we must fight harder and work smarter for prevention, and we must continue to get the message out that prevention works! Prevention really is critical.
[Phil Mooring, a Certified Substance Abuse Prevention Consultant and Licensed Clinical Addictions Specialist, is Executive Director of Families in Action, Inc., a twenty-five year old nonprofit, community based drug prevention organization based in Wilson. He holds a Master’s degree from East Carolina University and in 2002 completed the Duke University Program in Nonprofit Management. Prior to assuming his current position in March 2001, Mooring was Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Walter B. Jones Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Center, Greenville, NC for twelve years.]
