I think that minimizing the trauma in their lives and instead ensuring that they have a nurturing and supportive environment throughout the entirety of their childhood is crucial.
If kids have people around them who show them that they are loved, encourage and support them, and help them discover interesting passions, they are less likely to use drugs and DRASTICALLY less likely to abuse and/or get addicted to drugs or alcohol.
It doesn't take much time hanging around any harm reduction or addiction support community to see that most addiction and substance abuse stems from trauma and/or shitty childhoods.
Depending on the study, in clinical populations with opioid addiction about 40-50% of them have or have had PTSD. The majority has often experienced some form of childhood abuse/maltreatment.
For my personal story:
I grew up with parents who heavily abused me physically and emotionally (and in other ways to a less frequent extent), spent more time screaming at me or hitting me than saying that they loved me or were proud of me, etc.
While I'm not and never have been a drug addict, I have struggled with heavy video game addiction and some other behavioural addictions.
I still struggle with social media/Internet addiction (though it has been improving significantly since I uninstalled most social media from my phone a few months ago), as well as severe CPTSD and a cocktail of other mental illnesses that is often debilitating at times.
I feel like I'm squandering a lot of the potential that I had at times, solely because the people who were supposed to love, care for, and encourage me instead heavily abused me and made me feel completely worthless, useless, and generally awful about myself.
I live my life walking on eggshells at times and I constantly feel exhausted and overwhelmed by trauma responses.
Why am I not addicted to drugs?
Probably due to sheer stubbornness and knowing so many current/former addicts.
I've watched people I grew up with destroy their lives with drug addiction, and I know some incredible people like
@cdin who have somehow gotten out of some very deep holes through overcoming immense trauma and the tons of awful shit that happened in their lives.
I honestly feel like behavioural addictions can be worse, at least in the medium and short term, since with some light drug addictions you can still function and go to work and get things done while on drugs if you have enough self-control.
But after seeing what I've seen, I will NEVER let myself get addicted to drugs or even touch hard drugs.