Matters of Substance

What is it?
Matters of Substance is a resource for schools. It contains information on subjects related to young people's exposure to and experience of alcohol and other drugs, and is intended as a support for those who present drug and alcohol education in schools, whether they are teachers, counsellors, health nurses or other staff.

Who uses it?
Matters of Substance is intended for teachers to use with students, for parents to read, and for students to use with guidance.

The contents can be used as direct information, as background for discussion and debate, or to prompt further research either through the links provided or independent endeavour. The activities suggested can be used in their current format or as a prompt for other activities to fit established programs.

Most information is geared toward High School students, but may be successfully adapted for use with younger students.

The new edition of Matters of Substance is now available and is being distributed.

If you would like to purchase extra copies of the publication, please download a publications order form and send in to us.

Feedback and suggestions
Each year we ask schools who receive Matters of Substance for feedback on the current edition, to help us prepare the next year's version. To date this feedback has been really helpful, suggesting topics, requesting graphics, asking for more statistics, seeking links for support organisations...

Have you received the 2009 Edition of Matters of Substance?
We value your input and so ask that you spend 5 minutes completing this online survey. If you complete it and provide an email address, you will receive a free PDF of the DRUG ARM bookmarks, and automatically go into the draw to win a DRUG ARM poster pack ($100 value).

Support
Sponsorship by people in the community, businesses and churches, as well as private individuals enable us to produce this resource. If you would like to support this publication, please contact us for more information.

References for teachers and students
We put plenty of references in the Matters of Substance books, and many of them are web-based to make them accessible for people. However, some of the links are quite long, so we have added them here for you to just click and go...