Substance abuse in the youth is one of the major problems of any society. The research purpose was the development of a program for changing female adolescents’ attitude toward substance abuse and evaluating its effectiveness.

To develop the treatment, important variables influencing in shaping attitudes toward substance abuse were selected. Afterwards, structural equation modeling approach was conducted for examining the relationship among variables (emotional intelligence, critical thinking, caring thinking and reasoning) and identifying significant paths and variables. Based on these variables, a program developed for changing students’ attitudes. To evaluate effectiveness of programs a pretest-post test design with the control group was used. Random sampling was carried out for selecting 26 students attending senior high schools in district 2 of Tehran. Then, sample randomly assigned in experimental and control groups. Experimental group exposed to philosophy for children intervention in the form of community of inquiry. Control group didn’t receive the intervention. The data were collected from Nazari's questionnaire for attitude toward substance abuse.

ANCOVA revealed that based on a composite score of attitude toward substance abuse (adjusting pretest effect), there is a significant difference between two groups at 0.99 significance level (partial = 0.329, P < 0.001, = 11.28).

It is recommended that the school based program should be used for developing and strengthen the students’ attitude based on exploring itself, rather than simply giving awareness about substance abuse. In this treatment, rather than highlighting accumulating knowledge, put emphasis on, thinking, decision-making, and management of emotions.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.