The new Municipal Plan for Drug Addiction 2021-2024 starts with the aim of promoting healthy habits

Even with a preventive extension on the Municipal Plan for Drug Addiction 2017-2020, the Municipal Plan for Drug Addiction 2021-2024 was ready and could be approved in the last ordinary plenary session of the year to be operational from the start of 2021.

The Municipal Drug Dependence Plan contains the planning of interventions and programmed actions in the prevention of drug addiction and other addictive disorders, with the main mission, highlighted by councilor Angela Llorca, is to "avoid drug use and the development of addictive behaviors in the municipality as well as promoting healthy habits in the population, especially in the youth ”.

The Municipal Drug Dependence Plan 2021-2024, explained the councilor, has been developed by the team of the Community Prevention Unit in Addictive Behaviors (UPCCA) of Benidorm that coordinates a psychologist specializing in prevention and addictions.

For its operation, it receives an annual subsidy from the Consellería de Sanidad Universal y Salud Pública, which in the last year amounted to € 36,906.20, and which has been requested again for this year.

The new plan, scheduled to be developed in four annual exercises, puts the accent, Llorca pointed out, on “giving a special role to young people in the activities carried out by the UPCCA” and on “making visible the resources that are available to comply with the plan and the benefit of the city puts the council, because they are a health asset ".

The Municipal Plan for Drug Addiction 2021-2024, the councilor explained, is based on eight main objectives that range from “establishing a communication strategy that allows the dissemination of the actions carried out, to maximize their reach” to collaborating with social agents that have a direct contact with the vulnerable population in the development of selective prevention programs with families and young people, and in coordinating the care service for young people with consumption without a dependency pattern.

For this, the maintenance of a close relationship with the centers is articulated through a network work coordinated by the psychologist José Miguel Fernández, the dissemination of initiatives through Social Networks and the weekly radio space in Onda Benidorm.

Among the objectives, and highlighted, is the training and involvement of social and educational agents in preventive activities to achieve greater effectiveness in the actions coordinated by the UPCCA. Along these lines, another objective is to obtain objective information about the knowledge and behavior of the young people of Benidorm that allows making decisions adapted to the reality of the municipality. To this end, said councilor Angela Llorca, "a biannual survey is being carried out at IES to obtain objective information and, based on it, redirect or expand initiatives."

Being immersed in actions to minimize the impact of Covid19, the Plan also contemplates as an objective to update the programs, materials and technical means used to adapt the methodologies to the health circumstances caused by the pandemic and make them more attractive to the recipients.

As a specific chapter, objective 5 focuses on increasing the active participation of the youth population in the activities developed by the UPCCA as an initiative to make visible alternative leisure resources aimed at health and at key moments, such as the Major Patron Festivities. .

Consolidate the work network established by the UPCCA with other social agents involved in the prevention of drug addiction and addictive behaviors, as well as stimulate collaborative actions between the Sports, Culture and Youth councils whose activities can develop health behaviors in the population and plan and develop universal and selective prevention programs in the educational and family environment with special emphasis on the development of so-called 'life skills, fostering messages of promotion and encouragement of health behaviors and critical thinking and not exclusively on avoiding risk behaviors, make up the final objectives.