Questions Remain About Whether Doctors Can Curb Children's Drug Use

What can doctors do to help kids stay away from drugs?

There's not much evidence to say one way or the other, it turns out.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which issues guidelines on what doctors should and shouldn't do, said there aren't enough reliable studies around to come up with any solid advice. So the task force gave the interventions an "I" for insufficient evidence. The kids might call it an incomplete.

We only identified six studies that addressed this question in primary care settings or in ways that were applicable to primary care, says Carrie Patnode, a research associate at Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/11/288697725/questions-remain-about-whether-doctors-can-curb-childrens-drug-use