The problem of this study is to determine the extent to which the Texas Education Agency and selected school districts have implemented the legislative provisions of House Bill 467, enacted by the Sixty-First Texas Legislature. No hypothesis is advanced. The purpose of the study is twofold: first, it describes the sequential development of the crime prevention and drug education program by the Texas Education Agency as mandated through House Bill 467; and second, it determines the current status of the crime prevention and drug education program in selected school districts through the use of a semi-structured personal interview with the individual assigned primary responsibility for coordination of the program in each of the nineteen school districts included in the study. It is the further purpose of this study to determine principal and teacher perceptions toward twenty-two factors related to drug abuse among students. This was accomplished through the use of a perception survey mailed to a random sample of 1,184 teachers and all 149 principals within the nineteen school districts participating in the study. This procedure resulted in the return of usable surveys by 804 teachers and 119 principals.

This study is concerned with drug knowledge and drug abuse attitudes of a sample of pre-adolescent schoolchildren, 90 from an urban community and 204 from two rural communities. The seven hypotheses tested compared drug knowledge levels and drug abuse attitudes with the variables of community of residence, sources of information, racial identity, acquaintance with drug users, and church affiliation. High levels of drug knowledge were found to be related to rural residence, perceived parental disapproval of drug use, frequency of church attendance, and, to a minor degree, to acquaintance with peer group drug users. The sample held negative views of drug abuse and intolerant drug attitudes correlated significantly with rural residence, parental interest in talking about drugs, church affiliation, and frequency of church attendance. High drug knowledge levels and intolerant drug abuse attitudes were related to only the .20 level of significance.