Best way to use USER_HISTORY$ and USER$ to do precheck

 Does anyone know how we can leverage the sys tables to do a precheck on password use...we need to create a tool for users to make changes in db/container services but we want to do a precheck to see if the user has used it before...we dont want them to try it then get an error ..or we dont want them to change the db password then fail in the container....we want to check across the system first...I know there are other ways to change passwords...they want us to make a tool ..thats why Im asking this question