Development of a School-Based Drug Abuse Prevention Curriculum for High-Risk Youths † Steve Sussman, Ph.D.* Abstract—This paper presents the rationale for and description of the empirical curriculum development process in Project Towards No Drug Abuse (Project TND), which is a five-year grant funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. First, the target population is described, continuation high-school youths who are at high risk for drug abuse. The rationale for developing a classroom- based curriculum tailored for them is also provided. Second, a brief description is provided of state-of-the-art generic social influences drug abuse prevention programming, which has been found to be the most effective among young adolescents. There is a the need to consider other prevention activities, particularly those that include motivational variables, to maximize prevention efforts among higher-risk youths. Third, five types of curriculum development studies are discussed that led to a curriculum that is being implemented with continuation high-school students at schools in five counties in southern California. Finally, the contents of the final curriculum product is provided, which consists of motivation, skills-training, and decision-making components. Keywords—curriculum development, drug abuse, high-risk youths, prevention †This research was supported by grant DA07601 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. *Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research and Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California. Please address correspondence and reprint requests to Steve Sussman, Ph.D., IPR-USC, 1540 Alcazar Street, CHP-209, Los Angeles, California 90033. Drug abuse may be defined as the accumulation of negative consequences resulting from drug use (Allison, Leone & Spero 1990; Newcomb & Bentler 1989). Numerous consequences befall those teenage youths who abuse drugs, including overdoses and accidents, early involvement in family creation and divorce, crimes such as stealing and violence, relatively less educational attainment, relatively less skilled employment with lower job stability, development of disorganized thinking and unusual beliefs that may interfere with problem-solving abilities and emotional functioning, relatively less adaptive coping, and relatively greater social isolation and depression (Newcomb & Bentler 1988).