The parent drug-prevention movement emerged in the latter half of the 1970s in response to the greatest escalation in drug use by children and adolescents in the history of the world. It originated with a number of people, who founded several different national organizations to lead the parent movement.

In August 1976, an Atlanta mother, Marsha Keith Mannat Schuchard, Ph.D., and her husband, Emory University professor Ronald Schuchard, Ph.D., discovered at their eldest daughter's thirteenth birthday party that she and most of her friends were using drugs that evening. In response, the family organized the nation's first parent-peer group. Such groups consist of parents whose children are each others friends. The parents come together to establish age-appropriate social and behavioral guidelines they agree to adhere to in order to protect their children and help them avoid unhealthy and destructive behaviors during adolescence. In...