The United Nations Office of Drug Control (UNODC) published ‘International Standards on Drug Use Prevention’ in 2013. The standards were developed through a systematic assessment of the international evidence on prevention and they provide a summary of the available scientific evidence.

The briefing provides a summary of the UNODC prevention standards and gives corresponding examples of relevant UK guidelines, programmes and interventions currently available in England. Its aim is to help people who commission, develop and implement prevention strategies and interventions to translate the standards into the English operating landscape. It also aims to support local authority commissioners to develop their prevention strategies and implement them in line with evidence.