Drug use and misuse among young people in Australia has caused concern throughout the community and has prompted nationwide action to address the problem. One component of intervention strategies with young people is drug education. Drug education in Australia represents an international philosophy of prevention and takes a harm minimisation approach to intervention. One strategy that has had international success in the area of drug education with young people, and that has been used effectively in health education in Australia since the 1970s, is peer education. Peer drug education involves young people conducting drug education sessions with their peers. An example of peer drug education in Australia is the Teenagers Teaching Teenagers' (Triple T) program, conducted in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). Evaluations and descriptions of peer drug education programs tend to focus more on outcomes pertaining to program recipients and fail to explore in detail the specific experience of peer leaders. Existing research on the experience of peer leadership does not explore in detail the personal experience of leaders, that being the effect of peer leadership training and duties on leaders' personal perceptions of drugs, their behaviour with drugs and their own feelings and skills. This thesis explores the personal experience of a group of peer leaders who participated in the Triple T program in 1994. It considers their perceptions of the program at the time of training and then goes on to explore the impact of this experience on their formulation of ideas about drugs to the present day. The thesis is a qualitative project which utilises in-depth interviewing and focus groups to gather data and then presents a thematic analysis of participant response. The thesis asks two research questions, 1. What do young men and women involved in the Triple T program take from the experience of peer leadership training and duties? 2. In what way does the Triple T' experience appear to contribute to the development of drug related ideas of these young people in the two years following involvement in the program? The findings suggest that the participants gained information, skills and personal development from the training and generally found it to be a positive experience. However, participants distanced themselves personally from a substantial amount of the training content and did not personally reflect on the training content to any great extent at the time of training. Training processes and some aspects of leadership duties more personally affected them, although again there was personal distancing from this part of the program. In exploring the findings there was difficulty determining the influence of the training experience due to participant reluctance to attribute influence to any one source on the formulation of ideas. Instead, participants describe a complex interaction of influences on the formulation of ideas about drugs and a process which involves maintaining control, upholding the notion of informed choice and incorporating ideas about drugs into the formation of an adult identity. Influences on these ideas include the training, actual experiences with drugs and observations of others. The thesis exploration suggests that being involved in peer drug education does impact on peer leaders but this experience was not personalised to any great degree at the time of training. However, in the following two years, participants called on the training information as well as other influences as they formed their ideas about drugs. The thesis raises some issues of how to maximise leaders' personal connection to the peer drug education process, if this is in fact a desired outcome of peer education. It also suggests the need for further research into the experience of peer leaders who seem to have remained the least considered party in the peer education movement.