Feasibility, Acceptability, and Efficacy of the Cannabis Awareness and Prevention Toolkit

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Cannabis, including smoked, blunts (cannabis rolled in a cigar leaf), edibles, and oils, is the most widely used drug among adolescents in the United States. With the passage of recreational and medical cannabis laws across the country, there is concern that adolescents will harbor misperceptions about the harms of cannabis, and that their acceptability and use of cannabis will further increase. Drug prevention programs have typically used schools as key venues for implementation, but often these programs are focused on fear tactics, use an “abstinence only” approach, and distribute curriculum materials in printed formats that need to be re-purchased when revised. To date, no comprehensive program focusing on prevention of all cannabis products has been developed, evaluated for efficacy, or widely disseminated throughout the U.S. To address this gap, we recently developed the Cannabis Awareness and Prevention Toolkit (CAPT), a free, online toolkit that consists of a curriculum, educational resources, and an external-resource directory to be used by educators, parents, juvenile justice workers, and healthcare providers to increase knowledge and awareness and reduce use among youth. The CAPT includes a five-session curriculum comprised of resources, activities, worksheets, PowerPoint presentations, games, and other tools aimed at changing adolescents’ attitudes towards and misperceptions about cannabis, increasing their resistance and coping skills, and decreasing intentions and actual use of all cannabis products. We have addressed 2 of the 6 stages needed to adequately develop, evaluate, and refine the CAPT, including conducting basic formative research to identify curriculum topics and develop the lessons (Stage 0); as well as developing, conducting preliminary evaluations, and refining the Curriculum (Stage I). Our next step is to conduct a study of the feasibility and acceptability of the of the Curriculum and conduct a pilot assessment of how and whether the Curriculum changes adolescents’ knowledge, attitudes, intentions, and behavior (Stage II). In so doing, we have the following three aims: (1) Assess educators’ views of the feasibility and acceptability of implementing the CAPT Curriculum in their classrooms; (2) Assess middle school students’ acceptability and perceptions of the CAPT and its lessons; and (3) Investigate the extent to which the Curriculum changes middle school students’ knowledge of, attitudes towards, intentions to use and actual use of different forms of cannabis. We will employ a mixed-methods, school-based, randomized controlled intervention study, collecting data through quantitative surveys and focus groups and interviews conducted with students and educators. The proposed project is particularly timely given changing cannabis legislation in the US, and the continued misperceptions and use of cannabis among youth. Further, the findings will provide critical data to (1) revise and refine the CAPT Curriculum, and (2) apply for an R01 to conduct a formal evaluation of the efficacy of the Curriculum (Stages III-IV) and to further implement and disseminate the Curriculum (Stage V).