Founded in 1979, the Nebraska Prevention Center for Alcohol and Drug Abuse ( NPCADA) provides leadership and technical assistance to government, educational, and voluntary organizations working to prevent health-risk behaviors, such as alcohol and other drug use, particularly among adolescents and young adults. NPCADA provides advice and direct assistance with: health education, health promotion, and risk prevention and reduction program development; needs assessments; program implementation and monitoring; program evaluation; and program revision. Housed in the College of Education and Human Sciences of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the NPCADA shares the college's mission to support the health of individuals, families, schools and communities, and has at its disposal the technology and faculty expertise of the college and university.
We acknowledge that drinking alcoholic beverages is a time-honored tradition. Alcohol's social uses range from the sacred to the profane, and its physical effects range from beneficial to fatal. It is an assumption of our work that indigenous and traditional patterns of alcohol use are typically associated with lower risks than market-driven styles of drinking and are therefore worthy of study.
Indigenous and traditional patterns of alcohol use limit drinking to special feasts and celebrations and proscribe the quantity and the frequency of drinking and also the behaviors associated with drinking and drunkenness. As such, indigenous and traditional patterns of alcohol use convey implicit social values and have a significant role in how young people learn to drink and the cultural context in which adolescent drinking occurs.