Grant Supports Study of Youths and Drugs

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will spend $20.5-million to try to find out what influences kids’ decisions to use or shun tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs.

The foundation, which in the last six years has poured more than $100-million into efforts to prevent children from smoking, also hopes to determine which substance-abuse-prevention programs are working and which are not.

Researchers at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research will conduct the five-year study. The institute has surveyed substance-abuse trends and attitudes among the nation’s young people since 1975. It will expand the study to ask kids about their exposure to prevention programs and whether policies restricting youths’ access to tobacco and other substances are being enforced, said C. Tracy Orleans, a senior program officer at the foundation.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Prevention Research Center will build a data base of prevention programs across the country and try to assess which are effective and which are not.

For more information about the program, contact C. Tracy Orleans, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, P.O. Box 2316, Princeton, N.J. 08543-2316; (609) 452-8701; World-Wide Web site: http://www.rwjf.org.