We wanted to come up with a different approach
January 19, 2017 8:56 AM   Subscribe

The percentage of 15- and 16-year-olds who had been drunk in the previous month plummeted from 42 per cent in 1998 to 5 per cent in 2016. The percentage who have ever used cannabis is down from 17 per cent to 7 per cent. Those smoking cigarettes every day fell from 23 per cent to just 3 per cent. This is how Iceland did it and why the Icelandic strategy for preventing/reducing teen substance use may or may not work elsewhere.
posted by elgilito (54 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
Well, whattaya know?
“We didn’t say to them, you’re coming in for treatment. We said, we’ll teach you anything you want to learn: music, dance, hip hop, art, martial arts.” The idea was that these different classes could provide a variety of alterations in the kids’ brain chemistry, and give them what they needed to cope better with life: some might crave an experience that could help reduce anxiety, others may be after a rush.

At the same time, the recruits got life-skills training, which focused on improving their thoughts about themselves and their lives, and the way they interacted with other people.
I have spoken with a couple of psychologists and counselors who work with teens & children, and they agree that a combination of teaching emotional coping skills and keeping kids busy does wonders for their moods and behavior.

It seems kind of obvious when someone says it, but it really would be great if all kids got some lessons in anger management, in how to identify negative thoughts and deal with them (simple CBT?), and in impulse control. It doesn't take much: I have seen young children get a short series of brief interventions that resulted in a 180-degree change in their behavior, making them happier, less volatile, and more able to cope with change.

I know that schools are already way over-loaded and under-resourced, but I do wish all kids could get sheep-dipped in these life skills. (I t sure would have made me a happier kid.)
posted by wenestvedt at 9:13 AM on January 19, 2017 [33 favorites]


I posted this on Facebook, but reposting here: the suggestions are curfews, a minimum drinking age, the PTA, and youth soccer.

"And when he looks at the results, Harvey Milkman thinks of his own country, the US. Could the Youth in Iceland model work there, too?"

Um, doesn't literally every community in America have these things already?
posted by kevinbelt at 9:18 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Um, doesn't literally every community in America have these things already?

Well, my equally glib answer is no.
posted by dinty_moore at 9:22 AM on January 19, 2017 [62 favorites]


I posted this on Facebook, but reposting here: the suggestions are curfews, a minimum drinking age, the PTA, and youth soccer.

"And when he looks at the results, Harvey Milkman thinks of his own country, the US. Could the Youth in Iceland model work there, too?"

Um, doesn't literally every community in America have these things already?


The explanation of the differences starts right under that sentence.

But, frankly, no. Not every community has curfews. Minimum drinking ages are enforced spottily. A lot of parents don't have the time to engage in the PTA. Youth soccer (and similar after-school programs) simply do not exist in many communities (including, amazingly, a lot of the ones that are having these problems).
posted by Etrigan at 9:24 AM on January 19, 2017 [17 favorites]


State funding was increased for organised sport, music, art, dance and other clubs,
...
In other cities – such as the origin of Jón’s “crisis call” – there is an openness to the data and there is money, but he has observed that it can be much more difficult to secure and maintain funding for health prevention strategies than for treatments.

Used to have a saying: always money for new construction, never money for maintenance.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:29 AM on January 19, 2017 [28 favorites]


Um, doesn't literally every community in America have these things already?

In the US all these things are paid for by parents so their existence is directly proportional to neighbourhood income. There are lots of places where the answer is no.
posted by GuyZero at 9:35 AM on January 19, 2017 [39 favorites]


Could the Youth in Iceland model work there, too?

No, because that model would require black children to receive goods and services from the state.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:39 AM on January 19, 2017 [91 favorites]


...And in towns where things like youth sports are available, often they become stratified into "premiere" and "elite" tiers that can make the pressure to perform and win even worse than it was before!
posted by wenestvedt at 9:40 AM on January 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


The percentage of 15- and 16-year-olds

In Iceland, there are only around 8000 15- and 16-year-olds, nearly all from the same economic and cultural background.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:41 AM on January 19, 2017 [17 favorites]


Um, doesn't literally every community in America have these things already?

Many have covered the "no" angle already.

However, even when it's "yes", in my experience, a lot of American neighborhoods just aren't that tight knit. So those things exist but a lot of people don't partake. Residents move all the time, nobody knows anybody else, unlike a place like Iceland where (according to ~the internet~) communities have way deeper roots and are much more close knit.

My current neighborhood is not $$$$$ but still highly involved in stuff like this--I actually get a community bulletin in the mail every month!--probably has all these things. But I don't join in because I moved here 2 months ago and don't know anyone and don't have the time to spend on people I don't know and may not get along with and anyway I'm planning to move again in 8 months. And I don't think I'm an outlier.
posted by aperturescientist at 9:41 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


"Not every community has curfews. Minimum drinking ages are enforced spottily. A lot of parents don't have the time to engage in the PTA. Youth soccer (and similar after-school programs) simply do not exist in many communities (including, amazingly, a lot of the ones that are having these problems)."

My point is that the problem in the US is the execution. The tone of the article is "whoa, why hasn't anyone else thought of this?" Other people have thought of it. It's not mind-blowingly original. Iceland just committed to them very strongly. The reason that these things aren't improving juvenile delinquency in the US is because we are insufficiently committed. I've worked with a lot of schools, and I don't think I've ever come across one that didn't nominally have a PTA or a basketball team. I have, on the other hand, come across many where single parents are too busy working two or three jobs to attend PTA meetings, or too poor to afford the fees and equipment for football or basketball. Likewise with the drinking age. There isn't a store in this country where a 15 year old kid can legally buy a case of beer. But there are plenty where 15 year olds *do* buy beer. My point was that, like most problems, we don't need to "innovate" our way to solutions. We just need to do what we're already doing much better (and to do more to alleviate poverty, which is the root cause of a lot of the stressors that kids are responding to).
posted by kevinbelt at 9:44 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


This is really cool and kind of intuitive.

But I do wonder how much the impact of the internet is being under-estimated here. It's acknowledged briefly in the article: kids go out less because they're home on the internet. Internationally, there is simply less street life than there used to be.
posted by latkes at 9:44 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


My point is that the problem in the US is the execution. The tone of the article is "whoa, why hasn't anyone else thought of this?" Other people have thought of it. It's not mind-blowingly original. Iceland just committed to them very strongly.

The article absolutely does not have that tone at all, and in fact goes out of its way to say that this is a "common sense approach" that has been radically enforced.
posted by xingcat at 9:49 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


In Iceland, there are only around 8000 15- and 16-year-olds, nearly all from the same economic and cultural background.

The article makes clear that the Youth in Europe program has had early success in places with wildly different socioeconomic profiles, like Bucharest.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:50 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


he tone of the article is "whoa, why hasn't anyone else thought of this?" Other people have thought of it. It's not mind-blowingly original.

My read of the article was that while obvious, these programs actually work if you set them up and that it also helps to have actual trained counsellors talking to kids to help them through rough patches.

My take-away was "if you pay for it, things will actually improve, a lot"
posted by GuyZero at 9:53 AM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Plenty of kids I knew who were into sports and activities also drank and got high, and lots of other kids just weren't into joining stuff. Plus, me and most of my friends had part time jobs, in fields like retail, landscaping, supermarkets, restaurants where there was plenty of booze and drugs easily available. YMMV.
posted by jonmc at 9:58 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


In the US, youth drinking/drugs/crime are seen as moral issues, rather than practical ones, and as such, a huge percentage of Americans are only comfortable dealing with them by finger wagging and moralizing. Practical considerations/options never enter into the picture.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:59 AM on January 19, 2017 [41 favorites]


"The article absolutely does not have that tone at all, and in fact goes out of its way to say that this is a 'common sense approach' that has been radically enforced."

The pull quote used as the title of this post is literally "we wanted to come up with a different approach".
posted by kevinbelt at 10:05 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I wonder how the youth rates of substance abuse fare as the kids get older. Does lowering the teen rates lower the rates for those kids as they grow up, as expected, or not? I expect they'll have the data to answer that question.

I also wonder if massive increases to teen sports enrollment will have unintended add-on effects for society, such as an uptick in adult bro-dom. That's more difficult to measure.
posted by gurple at 10:08 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


if the article makes anything seem exceptional/groundbreaking its the results not the interventions.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 10:12 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's more than just youth soccer:
At the same time, the recruits got life-skills training, which focused on improving their thoughts about themselves and their lives, and the way they interacted with other people.
Nobody is saying sports alone solve problems - but well-funded sports and art (which no obviously many/most communities don't have) and other hobby programs will get kids in the door and help them open to all the other wraparound education. At least that's my interpretation.
posted by R a c h e l at 10:17 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Aren't teen drinking and drug use down overall - maybe not as much so - in the US? Which I suspect *is* related to technology...
posted by atoxyl at 10:23 AM on January 19, 2017


No, because that model would require black children to receive goods and services from the state.

Ding ding ding ding ding we have a winner.

No one with the power to do something about it gives a shit about black and brown kids being self/peer destructive, except to the extent they view it as a positive side effect of segregation.
posted by PMdixon at 10:35 AM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Crucially, the surveys have continued. Each year, almost every child in Iceland completes one. This means up-to-date, reliable data is always available.

One can only dream.
posted by quaking fajita at 10:38 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


almost every child in Iceland completes one.

And, like all young people everywhere, they answer truthfully.
posted by jonmc at 10:43 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


And, like all young people everywhere, they answer truthfully.

People who survey teenagers about drinking and sex understand how teenagers work.
posted by GuyZero at 11:03 AM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


I dunno, back in the 80's when I was a teenager, you would've thought that in the neopreppie conservative times, that drug and alcohol use was a relic of the 60's and 70's, but it was everywhere.
posted by jonmc at 11:11 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Aren't teen drinking and drug use down overall - maybe not as much so - in the US? Which I suspect *is* related to technology...

Yes, the article mentions that more kids are staying inside to stay online and that they suspect that is why drinking rates are down in the UK. I assume that can also be seen in the US.

One thing I appreciated about this article was that it talked about changing attitudes and the (sometimes) harmful culture around sports:
There are some differences: in one location (in a country “on the Baltic Sea”), participation in organised sport actually emerged as a risk factor. Further investigation revealed that this was because young ex-military men who were keen on muscle-building drugs, drinking and smoking were running the clubs. Here, then, was a well-defined, immediate, local problem that could be addressed.
As an introverted fat kid in the rural Midwest, sports stopped being appealing around the age when drugs and alcohol entered the picture. The pressure to be the best and the focus on football (again, Midwestern small town) did nothing to heighten my self-esteem or introduce emotional coping skills. I like that the approach Iceland is taking that goes beyond typical organized activities to increase state funding "for organised sport, music, art, dance and other clubs, to give kids alternative ways to feel part of a group".

We seem to wait until college to offer these kinds of options for finding a place to belong, and even then, it depends on what kind of college you go to and whether you go to college. I just love this whole approach and the acknowledgment that teenagers are in a stage of development that benefits from support but also limitations (curfew).
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 11:24 AM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Wow, the things you can do with a homogeneous population of 300,000!
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:33 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Wow, the things you can do with a homogeneous population of 300,000!

I'm trying to understand the point here. The article makes it pretty clear that this isn't a panacea for every country.
Three hundred and twenty-five million people versus 330,000. Thirty-three thousand gangs versus virtually none. Around 1.3 million homeless young people versus a handful.
The dismissiveness/snark seems misplaced when the article addresses your very point, but I could be misreading?
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 11:39 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


My feeling is that more efforts along these sorts of lines is needed not just for kids, but for communities in general. The rise in abuse of opiates, the general sense of malaise and dismay at the world, and feelings of disconnection and fear of others that has led us to where we are seem to stem from a growing loss of real community and socialization.

The specific activities, it seems to me, matter less than in providing some sense of self worth and connection to others through shared involvement and enthusiasm for doing pretty much anything that has some even moderate positive growth potential. The idea of "looking forward" to an event or activity in itself provides a huge boost in well being , from my experience, as it makes the more mundane activities less dreary and can provide a boost of optimism and, presumably, changes in brain chemistry that accompany excitement and feeling more fulfilled.

One of the issues with these programs, it seems, is that they do tend to get too tied to the idea of competition and sports often, which is fine for some, but once the idea morphs a little into competition as the goal then it becomes a more prestige and skill oriented event for the few rather than the same sort of socializing effort for the many. Nothing wrong, I suppose, with there being some chance for more competitive efforts, but thinking of it in terms of competitions may not be the most beneficial method for many. Arts, crafts, and more basic group events can be, I think, just as helpful.

With all the problems we are facing due to automation, technology and internet culture, bringing some more direct contact with others and structure to communities could aid some in lessening the divides and providing a better vision of what a post work society might look like and how it might function. (Even if we never actually go fully post work, the needs involved are likely similar.)
posted by gusottertrout at 12:17 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


With all the problems we are facing due to automation, technology and internet culture, bringing some more direct contact with others

You know where I get direct contact with others? My bar. (My job, too, but I'm only there because I need the money)
posted by jonmc at 1:10 PM on January 19, 2017


You know where I get direct contact with others? My bar. (My job, too, but I'm only there because I need the money)

Yeah, and that, I think, is one of the reasons drinking is so central to so many people's lives, especially in more rural communities, where the bar is often the social center for the area. If you don't have a job or have one that doesn't provide much interaction, the desire for companionship and distraction can be even stronger. At least that's how it seemed in the areas I've known.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:33 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


It also indirectly connects to some of the excess importance things like televised sports have in the culture, as almost acting as an excuse for drinking and socializing, even in towns or states without pro sports teams of their own.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:35 PM on January 19, 2017


In the US, youth drinking/drugs/crime are seen as moral issues, rather than practical ones, and as such, a huge percentage of Americans are only comfortable dealing with them by finger wagging and moralizing. Practical considerations/options never enter into the picture.

It is more than just finger wagging moralizing in America. There are also huge amounts of self-congratulatory moralistic back patting.
posted by srboisvert at 1:50 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


It seems kind of obvious when someone says it, but it really would be great if all kids got some lessons...

Because it's not obvious and still contested research. One example is that CBT has many proponents but there is also substantial criticism of it. Even the notion of "kids getting lessons" places the subject in the position of a consumer, with the relational and political ramifications of that. Modern research in child education is as much about reworking the presuppositions of educators as it is about ways to teach and relate, and this has to be consistent with science (wherever possible, and that's the tricky bit).

So there are really two challenges, in that many places aren't socially organized to emulate Iceland, and that science (basically all the soft sciences) is in flux in terms of developing a better understanding. And that's what renders this problem inherently political, but if one takes on an optimist's lens then this is an opportunity to get creative.
posted by polymodus at 1:57 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


This reminds me a lot of the really fantastic work that MeFi's own maias has done in her most recent book, Unbroken Brain, which I bought literally the second I found out it existed. When you start treating addiction like a learning disorder, it opens the door for all these constructive ways to prevent and treat it. When you persist in thinking you can punish people out of a disorder that by its very definition is resistant to punishment, you continue to not get anywhere.
posted by fiercecupcake at 2:26 PM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


thanks Fiercecupcake!!!!

there are many things going on here. internet and phones do seem to have reduced drug misuse everywhere, homogeneity of population definitely helps, training life skills and providing alternatives and improving social connectedness are important too (research in U.S. shows greater school connectedness = less drug use/ less problem drug use).

Iceland however also has one of the lowest rates of inequality in the world and they were unique in responding to the financial crisis (which occurred during the study period) by basically saying FU to the banks and the creditors and Europe and instead helping those who were harmed. This meant they didn't experience a huge increase in unemployment, despair, etc. that we saw here and I can't imagine that this community-strengthening response didn't have something to do with the size of the decline seen here.

Iceland also provides lots of community building support... family leave, daycare, etc.... that we simply don't have. This, too, helps allow this to work.

Without a strong social safety net, these measures will not have anything like the dramatic impact seen in Iceland [and there they probably wouldn't have been as big without the crash response], though they will certainly help. And as mentioned above, yeah, we aren't going to do "midnight basketball" and give kids music lessons because [racism] and because dammit, kids should be morally strong enough to just say no without us having to be nice to them and you know, actually provide stuff that they like to do. oh, and we don't want to pay high property taxes and waste our money giving kids things to do after school that might really be fun.

we do know how to dramatically reduce teen misbehavior and to prevent a lot of addiction by reducing people's need for self medication— but we don't care to do so, unfortunately.
posted by Maias at 2:47 PM on January 19, 2017 [16 favorites]


The basic gist of the story is true enough, but there are a couple of errors I should mention:
1) There is no town named "Tindar" in Iceland. I have no idea what town she can possibly mean.

2) It has been forbidden in Iceland for anyone under the age of 20 to drink since long before I was born. A quick google turned up a law to that effect from the 1960s, but I believe it goes back probably at least to the 40s.
The second is easy enough to understand (the legal age to buy tobacco was increased in the 90s) but the first one is just bizarre.

Anyway, yes, when I was an Icelandic teen in the 90s, having classmates just kinda vanish into drug addiction was something that happened. As far as I can tell, this is something that has become a much smaller problem. I should mention that I mean a class of 25 students or so. In primary school (6-16 years of age) kids are in groups of about 25 that mostly go to the same classes. Only in electives do you end up having classes with other pupils at the school.

In my school a number of kids in my year (a total of a little over 50 kids were in my year) ended up getting involved in drugs and basically dropping out of society. Counting it out in my head, it was something like five kids that got involved, and two of them just vanished from school. Looking back, there was no particular danger that the rest of us associated with these kids. At the time there wasn't much violence associated with Icelandic drug dealing. That's changed quite a bit in the last fifteen years or so. One of the kids who passed through my school, a year older than me, ended up as one of the most infamous drug enforcers in Iceland. A bunch of kids I knew from here and there, both school and extracurricular activities, died of drug-related causes or were permanently damaged.

Drinking was a whole 'nother thing. I held out until 16 and was considered something of a puritanical weirdo. In my last job I sometimes worked with 18 and 19 year olds. Some of them had never been drunk, which would have been practically unheard of in my generation. This has been a huge cultural shift in my lifetime.
posted by Kattullus at 2:50 PM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


A law was also passed prohibiting children aged between 13 and 16 from being outside after 10pm in winter and midnight in summer. It’s still in effect today.

You might reduce alcohol consumption and smoking pot among adults if nobody was allowed outside after 10 PM, but that wouldn't mean it's justified. I don't think government has the right to impose those kinds of limits on people's freedom, whether it's adults or adolescents.

It's especially galling to me that the article seems to accept without question the notion that it's a problem if a 16-year-old is smoking pot. Given my own experience with marijuana over 40-plus years, that's not a idea that I'd endorse.
posted by layceepee at 3:24 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


And when he looks at the results, Harvey Milkman thinks of his own country, the US.

Boy, talk about the hero America needs right now.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:53 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I predict the Youth in Europe program is going to have a significant drop in popularity when they try and export it to Asia. (I'll see myself out.)
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:02 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


At the most basic level, it only makes sense to give young people something accessible to do with their leisure time. Unfortunately, young people today don't have as many opportunities as older generations. Way back in the 1980's we had video game arcades, roller rinks, and other low cost activities we could socialize around. Today's young people have to work 3 hours to pay to go to a movie - all the rinks and arcades are gone - even the local miniature golf place was sold. Look at any high school, the majority of students who are involved in activities - whether it's band, sports, acting, clubs - the majority of those students are just too damn busy enjoying their activity to find time for drugs and alcohol.
posted by NoraCharles at 4:44 PM on January 19, 2017


It's an interesting idea, but this article is kind of a giant mess in terms of factoring out correlation and causation, as well as presenting a lot of totally unsourced and apparently cherry-picked statistics, to the point that it's impossible to conclude anything. I can't help thinking of that Scott Carrier piece The Friendly Man about a time he was hired to do a radio report on the heartwarming crime-reduction effects of a teens' midnight basketball league, despite the fact that there was no evidence that it reduced crime, and while he was at the midnight basketball game, his recording equipment was stolen out of his bag.
posted by phoenixy at 7:37 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


This neither invalidates the accomplishments nor means we shouldn't try it, but: An awful lot of studies seem to find that putting more resources into addressing a problem and making it a matter of significant focus will actually improve things. [Even if it's more efficient "in the long run" you're asking for the government to pick up the tab on a lot of things they aren't doing now (or at least not at the same scale.)]

Also, in specifically American issues, how many MeFis would encourage every single child in the nation to fill out a survey each year and turn it over to the Trump administration so the White House can help decide on when children should be allowed to roam the streets freely? Would underserved communities in New York or St. Louis be wrong to be suspicious of local governments asking for more detail on drug use?
posted by mark k at 9:03 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was asked to fill one of those surveys out when I was in 5th grade. I hadn't actually done any of the things (alcohol, other drugs, sex, etc), but even at the time I knew there was no way in hell I would have admitted to any of them if I had...
posted by Juffo-Wup at 9:17 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


What's interesting to me is that I see a lot of the opposite problem - I spent about an hour tutoring a 6th grader (I teach 7th grade there) after school, and he spent at least 10 minutes of that hour telling me how stressed he was about the amount of work he had, given that he was about to spend his entire evening at swim practice.

I live in a more affluent community, but I saw this from students in the low-income community in which I worked previously too. The levels of anxiety and depression are off the charts. I have at least 4-5 students for whom stress is such an issue that they have physical manifestations that require special education accommodations. The after-school sports and extracurriculars are rarely helpful in reducing their anxiety; often, they are the primary cause.

I can definitely see students for whom the addition of a music or dance class would be incredibly helpful. But the students I have who are drinking or smoking are doing it to numb the feelings of anxiety about their lives and the pressure they feel to be the best and succeed.

It's such a difficult issue. But this article was interesting - thanks for posting it.
posted by guster4lovers at 9:34 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Exactly, it's not art and sports per se, but the way that these activities integrate into a student's life and whether/how that enhances their development. In well-off communities, e.g. Silicon valley syndrome comes to mind, sometimes there can be too much structure and competitive stress. Is a particular student encouraged or socially pressured to focus on certain activities because of resumes and university applications (e.g. extrinsic motivation theory), or because it actually helps them psychologically, developmentally, etc. There's a ton of research into educational psychology in this regard.
posted by polymodus at 10:41 PM on January 19, 2017


That's a good point about university. One major difference unaddressed by the article is that kids and parents in Iceland do not have the pressure of getting into university. Higher education is low cost to students and there are no limits on enrollment in most undergraduate subjects (with the exception of a few, like medicine) so that's not a factor. That's a potential cause of anxiety which is missing, compared to American kids.
posted by Kattullus at 11:43 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Short-termism also impedes effective prevention strategies in the UK, says Michael O’Toole, CEO of Mentor, a charity that works to reduce alcohol and drug misuse in children and young people.

*cough* bullshit *cough*

I happen to have some relatively recent UK statistics for young people's alcohol, tobacco and drug use prevalence to hand. In the UK from 2001 to 2014 last year cannabis use in 11-15 year olds fell from 13.4% to 6.7%, regular smoking from 10% to 3% and the proportion that drunk alcohol at least once a week from 20% to 4%.

Given the lack of any comparable programme in the UK, but the clear reductions seen in substance use, this seems like a pretty clear case of correlation not equalling causation. I suspect that the common factor is actually the rise in ADHD medication over the same time period, which moved a lot of potential young drug users who would otherwise self-medicate using amphetamines and cannabis from illicit substance use to prescription drug use. A reduction in the risk-seeking behaviours often common in young people with untreated ADHD likely also has an impact in reduced tobacco and alcohol use, although there's probably other factors at work there too.
posted by xchmp at 3:02 AM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's hard to find concrete, evidence-based objections to this. But, the kid I was in high school demands that I yell, "fuck off, totalitarian assholes." Crushing the souls of your young people with curfews seems like far too large a price to pay for curb delinquency and substance abuse. Having a 10pm curfew might have prompted me to explore civil disobedience at an even younger age - which might have been a good thing - but it also would have convinced me to hate civic authority and school officials even more than I already did. On my very small list of reasons not to move to Reykjavík, shocking disrespect for the autonomy of teenagers is pretty near the top, assuming this is genuine and widespread.

My US public high school spent an embarrassing amount of time on "life-skills training, which focused on improving their thoughts about themselves." It was taught by a tone-deaf football coach who had the sense of humor of a cartoon nun, and everyone interesting enough to bother talking with spent the entire class time attempting to work shocking stories of unconventional sexual acts, suicide, and non-prosecutable substance abuse into our personal essays in order to watch his face turn red trying to respond to them. I'd have felt bad for the guy, if he didn't spend half his time trying to cajole us into embracing the glory of competitive, team sports. The cross section of people with a mature and thoughtful perspective on human experience and people willing to teach a "life skills" class in school is vanishingly small. Perhaps Iceland is different, but my suspicion is that they've succeeded mostly in convincing kids to lie when responding to substance use surveys.

Nearly all the professionally successful, engaged, interesting people I know skipped school, took drugs, and stayed up all night throughout high school. Nearly all the directionless drifters and fuckups I know skipped school, took drugs, and stayed up all night throughout high school. It's still anecdotal, but the numbers aren't small: being a good kid has almost not correlation with having a good life. Being a kid with significant economic resources or one who has lucked into financially useful talents, on the other hand, makes all the difference.
posted by eotvos at 10:40 AM on January 20, 2017


The dismissiveness/snark seems misplaced when the article addresses your very point, but I could be misreading?

TA doesn't address this point, it merely mentions it, and the point i'm making is that no population center in the US that even approaches the size of Iceland is as homogeneous as that entire country (save perhaps Salt Lake City).

There are some decent ideas in this article, but some of the framing , mostly the "why don't other countries adopt these ideas now!" is snark worthy.

maybe a given city, or state could try, but Iceland's unique size and homogeneity are huge factors and will be difficult to scale into almost any other nation sized entity.
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:21 AM on January 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Anyway, yes, when I was an Icelandic teen in the 90s, having classmates just kinda vanish into drug addiction was something that happened.

Given this, I always find it surprising that Icelandic crime fiction gets drug use/drug subculture so consistently and drastically wrong.

It tends to read like stuff written in the 60's in the rest of the world, where the writers had nobody they could actually ask about this stuff, and no internet where they could check it.

Personally, I wonder how much of Iceland's outcomes are a product of their being a relatively small island community with a homogeneous population. It's hard to get away with very much in those places where everyone knows everybody and all their business. Places like the Channel Islands seem to be much the same.

(Ah, I see OHenryPacey makes the same point.)
posted by PeterMcDermott at 1:20 AM on January 21, 2017




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