Drug Education News

The Conservative Party’s Social Justice Policy Group have produced a report, Breakdown Britain, which sets out their understanding of a number of social policy issues. This has been widely covered in the media, largely focusing on the role of the family.

There is a whole section on what they call Addicted Britain, which Kathy Gyngell, the Chairman of the Working Group, describes as “a work in progress”.

I’ve not had a chance to read anywhere near all of the 150 page document, but here’s a snippet from the executive summary:

The “drugs and alcohol epidemic” is affecting young people

Children’s alcohol consumption has doubled, not in the last 50, but in the last 15 years. 45% of 14 to 15 years olds now drink on a weekly basis; 10% Year 7 boys (11 to 12 year olds) binge drink on at least a monthly basis - 60% for boys by the time they are in Year 11. Many surveys show that girls are catching up and the consumption gap is narrowing. Today 26% of children have taken drugs compared with 5% in 1987. 4% have tried Class A drugs and 1% took heroin in the last year. In Scotland 3% of 15 year olds take drugs on a weekly basis.

Youth workers report that the majority of vulnerable children they are in touch with have a heavy dependence on cannabis while there are small but identifiable groups
of ‘crack addicted’ children.

National statistics for both children and adults are likely to be underestimates as the prime drug-using subgroups - truants, excludees and children in care, the homeless and prisoners are not surveyed.

There is a lot more detail in the body of the report, but so far as I can tell only one reference to drug education, which came from a witness statement:

another contribution to the problem has been drug education and government initiatives. I grew up in the eighties with the ‘Just Say No’ campaign and the ‘Heroin Screws You Up’ pictures, depicting a ruined young man all huddled up, a complete mess.The message was, if you take drugs, this will be you, and fast.

But it’s not like that. So when the odd kid experiments and doesn’t end up like that the message is lost. It can take years to become that ruined, and that isn’t the company the youngsters are keeping until they get there, which is too late. As a result a generation brought up on the ‘Heroin Screws You Up’ campaign didn’t see it working like that.

Of course drug education has moved on a fair way since the 1980s and best practice no longer advocates a “just say no” message; recognising, as the witness does, that it doesn’t reflect the lived experience of the minority of young people who do take drugs.

Understandably, the paper appears to be stronger on defining the problem and assessing the shortcomings of current policy, as they see them, than on looking at ways forward.

However they say the following at the end of the executive summary:

The nature and the scale of the addiction problem, detailed in the main report, along with the failure of this Government’s drugs strategy, suggests that prevention and intervention will be the underlying themes of the policy solutions proposed in the final report.. The Commission will be taking evidence on the best treatment practices for recovery outcomes for both alcohol- and drug-associated problems, with the aim of identifying those providers with the most successful track records and client endorsement.

I’m a little unclear on what they mean by prevention and intervention, or the sorts of approaches they’re interested in exploring. But that may just be because they’ve not reached any conclusions on that as yet.