1970s Dutch health educators show that scaring the kids doesn't work / Drug and Alcohol Findings, 19 June 2008
http://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&tab=wm#inbox/11aa10deca7a98dc
"Back in the '70s, deploying ‘scare tactics' was the dominant approach to drug education. Today few would think it worthy of study, but such tactics regularly resurface in practice and retain their appeal. Hence the relevance of this study from the early 1970s when Dutch health educators put scare tactics to the test. The result? School pupils administered the warnings were twice as likely to start using drugs (mostly cannabis) as those left to their own devices. Those just given ‘the facts' also did worse. The only pupils whose drug use was retarded were those not taught about drugs at all, but given the chance to discuss the problems of adolescence with their teachers. Unprecedented rigour made these findings hard to dismiss, prompting a policy rethink in the UK and in the Netherlands."
PDF - http://findings.org.uk/docs/Ashton_M_14.pdf