I’ve been working on a new website for the Drug Education Forum which I hope you’ll want to go and take a look at.
As you’ll immediately see the new site includes video that we shot asking young people to talk about their sense of the value of drug education as well as other resources that we’ve produced over the last few years.
The idea is that we’ll also integrate this blog into the main site which will I hope will make the rest of our site more accessible.
Anyway I’m hoping you’ll like the site and if you have any feedback you’ll let me know.
Filed under: Drug Education Forum Members
22 December, 2009 • 11:06 am
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Donaldson instead seemed to be arguing there was no evidence for the proposition that introducing children gradually to alcohol made them less likely to become binge drinkers or alcoholics. That may be true as far as it goes, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and there is at least plenty of anecdotal support for the idea that bringing up children to drink responsibly, however that is defined, is better than prohibition. It is also true that some people are predisposed to become problem drinkers whatever regime their parents impose, but since alcohol is part of our social fabric, it surely makes sense for most parents to build up a little familiarity and tolerance in their children while they still have some influence over them.
Filed under: Delicious
19 December, 2009 • 11:07 am
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PARENTS must NEVER give kids under 15 booze, Britain's top doctor will say today.
Even a little gives them the taste and can lead to heavy and binge drinking in later life.
Sir Liam Donaldson's warning comes with today's release of the Government's first official guidance for parents on children and alcohol.
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ALMOST one in six 16 to 17-year-olds admit getting drunk THREE times a week, a report reveals.
Ten per cent confessed to having sex while drunk and later regretting it.
As many as one in four had been boozing before having unprotected sex for the first time.
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Available data tells us that Donaldson isn't right or wrong: if born in England into a family that does not abuse alcohol, a young person is more likely to follow the drinking patterns already established by his country and peers, regardless of whether or not she or he was sipping beer with parents aged 11. As epidemiologist Marie Choquet points out, we can put forward the hypothesis that wilful intoxication is a model that tends to fade with age. It is therefore down to us adults to show a good example to our teenagers. I am reminded of the words of food activist Michael Pollan on eating responsibly: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." A similar quote could be drafted when it comes to alcohol: "Savour quality, artisan drinks with friends. Not too many. Do not drive."
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Though he's recently announced his retirement , the chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson still seems to have a fair bit of fight in him. Today he's announced that there's no evidence whatsoever that introducing kids to alcohol early encourages sensible drinking in later life. In doing so he's charging directly at the dearly held middle class myth of 'wine weaning'. If we all just behaved like they do on the continent, the theory goes, giving kids watered wine as we all snarf local cheeses and fresh bread under the loggia, then they won't turn into drunken hoodies when they grow up.
It's a lovely notion, and fiercely cleaved to by those who summer in Provence and Umbria. Maybe they're right – they have the experience. On the other hand, I heard a similar theory of child rearing in the backwoods of Tennessee as I watched a 10 year old girl put 30 rounds in a 5" group with an AR15 assault rifle.
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Parents who have a "laissez-faire" attitude to their children's drinking have been warned they are putting them at risk.
Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, said people who allow their teenagers to drink alcohol with their friends could be storing up problems, while middle-class families who dilute their children's wine may also be misguided.
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LONDON (Reuters) – Parents should not give any alcohol to children before they are 15 and only in small amounts when they are older if the country's serious alcohol problem is to be tackled, England's top doctor said on Thursday.
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This weekend I shall sit down to Sunday lunch with my children, splash their glasses with a drop of claret, and drink a hearty toast to the departure of the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson. My children are nine and 11, so I know Sir Liam would disapprove – indeed, he told us as much in his latest fatwa. "Children under 15 should not drink alcohol at all," declared his new health guidelines on children's drinking. "Those between 15 and 17 should be supervised by their parents if they are drinking and should limit alcohol intake to one day a week."
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Short video on the CMO's guidance on alcohol
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Sorry, Sir Liam but I am not going to fall in with your latest recommendations on teenage drinking. You may be aboslutely right in saying that no child under 15 should touch alcohol, but if my fourteen year old – or indeed my ten year old – asks for a drink, I shall let him or her have one. If the child feels sick afterwards, that’s fine.
Filed under: Delicious
18 December, 2009 • 2:09 pm
Liverpool John Moores University have a new web page about the European drug prevention standards that they are beginning to develop.
They describe the aims as:
This project aims to improve European drug prevention practice by creating an empirically derived reference framework to bridge the gaps between science, policy and practice. The overall objective of the project is to compile, review and
Filed under: Uncategorized
A further paper throwing doubt on the efficacy of Project ALERT – also see here.
The researchers say:
School-based drug prevention curricula constitute the nation’s most prevalent strategy to prevent adolescent drug use. We evaluated the effects of one such curriculum, Project ALERT, on adolescent substance use.
They describe the results of their research:
This paper examines data from
Filed under: Uncategorized
Some new research from Canada about the impact of cannabis on young people’s brains is written up here:
The damaging effects of this illicit drug [cannabis] on young brains are worse than originally thought, according to new research by Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, a psychiatric researcher from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre. The new study, published in Neurobiology of
Filed under: Uncategorized
17 December, 2009 • 1:20 pm
The Guardian carries an interview with Barbara Skinner of Solve It. In it Barbara the death of her own son from solvent abuse and was the reason she set up Solve It:
"All my years of training as a nurse didn’t prepare me for Darren lying there. I put him in the recovery position. I called the ambulance, but it was too late. I learned later that he would have needed to be defibrillated
Filed under: Uncategorized
16 December, 2009 • 12:23 pm
The Guardian carry a comment piece about the response of a school in Kent to some students who were recently caught in possession of mephedrone. The young people were give fixed term exclusions.
The author argues:
Even if we concede that mephedrone is commonly sold as a "plant fertiliser" – to avoid food safety checks – both the supply and the use of this "legal
Filed under: Uncategorized
15 December, 2009 • 11:50 pm
The chart above (click on it for a bigger and easier to read version) comes from data contained in this paper, and describes the % of children living with drug misusing adult
I thought it may be of interest to this audience in terms of the issues for schools and others around hidden harm.
Filed under: Uncategorized
14 December, 2009 • 11:05 am
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MORE than 6,000 children aged 10 to 15 were cautioned or taken to court for alcohol abuse, latest figures show.
Police dealt with 39,714 underage drinkers, including 124 aged between 10 and 12, between 2003 and 2007.
Filed under: Delicious
