Environmental Strategies

Environmental strategies fall into the categories of (1) policy adoption, (2) enforcement, (3) communication and (4) education. These strategies work to change those factors in the environment, described above, such as norms, media and availability, in order, ultimately, to change behavior.

Policy Strategies: Effective policy interventions must focus on the availability of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. To do so, policy strategies must use the classic "Four Ps of Marketing" in order to counter conditions that promote the (1) price, (2) place, (3) product, and (4) promotion of ATOD products.

Here are some examples of formal policies, regulations and laws that can be implemented to help reduce substance use and abuse:
• Minimum purchase ages
• Increased excise taxes
• SUI and "zero tolerance" restrictions
• Laws restricting advertising
• Bans on cigarette vending machines
• Bans on smoking in public buildings
• Legal limit of .08 blood alcohol content
• Zoning regulations to limit the number of liquor establishments

Enforcement Strategies: Examples of enforcement include:

• Fining retailers for selling alcohol or tobacco to minors
• License revocation for driving under the influence
• Asset forfeiture for selling illicit drugs

Communication Strategies: Communication can take the form of (1) media advocacy, (2) social marketing or (3) media literacy.

• Media advocacy means using mass media to advance a public policy message or initiative;
• Social marketing uses the principles of commercial advertising in public service campaigns to make the message more effective; and
• Media literacy is designed to give individuals the skills and knowledge to analyze and evaluate media messages critically and to become smart consumers.

Education Strategies: in order for policy and enforcement to be effective, the public must know what measures are available to them, and what policies they are expected to follow. Examples of education include:

• Server training programs;
• Merchant education programs;
• Surgeon General's warning on cigarette packs; and
• Media advocacy efforts to increase vendors' perceptions of the consequences for violating policies.

A subset of education strategies involves educating opinion leaders. This process entails identifying those groups that exist in the community, and finding who among those groups are the opinion leaders. Then, educating those leaders to be champions of the environmental strategy you are implementing. This process will help you to move the policy agenda forward.

Advantages

Compared to prevention strategies that focus on individuals or families and seek to make changes in one person at a time, environmental strategies have the ability to reach entire populations, bringing about behavior changes among large numbers of people. Environmental strategies:

• Are effective and efficient;
• Can produce immediate results; and
• Are inherently sustainable.

Once in place many environmental strategies can have immediate effects on availability. Some examples of this include:

• Sales taxes;
• Limits on vendor licenses;
• Bans on vending machines;
• Keg registration; and
• Restrictions on happy hours.

Environmental strategies are sustainable. Changes in the legal, economic and social structures that affect substance sue foster important shifts in both individual attitudes and community norms. Over time, this change in the system leads to fewer opportunities and inducements to use substances. And, unlike programs directed at individuals, policy changes don't depend on a constant influx of dollars to keep them going.

Challenges

But, there are also some challenges inherent to implementing environmental strategies. They include:

• The discomfort some may feel in challenging the status quo;
• It can be challenging to measure the outcomes of some environmental strategies (e.g., media campaigns);
• There may be indirect costs to some environmental strategies (e.g., lost revenue from alcohol ads at community events);
• There are also direct costs (e.g., new or increased enforcement efforts); and
• It can take more time to implement environmental strategies because of the degree of mobilization required to change community readiness to support these strategies.

Community Mobilization

Community mobilization is the key to success of environmental strategies because these strategies must be supported by a critical mass of community stakeholders in order to succeed. Like other prevention strategies, in order to be most successful, environmental strategies require a comprehensive community prevention planning process to guide their selection and implementation.