Drug Education News

The Daily Mail runs the story about evidence given to the Home Affairs Select Committee from a senior black policeman.

Mr Logan, who has been a prominent figure in the National Black Police Association, made his comments in a paper on youth crime presented to the Home Affairs Select Committee yesterday.
He argued that since reclassification there [...]

The Guardian have been conducting research about the difference between the risk taking behaviour teenagers will admit to and what their parents think they’ve done:

Of children who have tried drugs, 65% of parents think that they have not, or do not know. Of children who smoke, 52% are unaware…
Overall, 84% of the children questioned said [...]

Clitheroe News reports on drug education delivered by a retired policeman:

TEENAGE Ribble Valley apprentices have been warned about the dangers of drugs, thanks to special workshops held by a former drug-buster.
Engineering apprentices at East Lancashire-based Training 2000 have been learning about the problems which drugs can cause in business, sport and everyday life.

The Guardian has a piece about Addaction which touches on the issues thrown up by Hidden Harm:

Rachel’s life imploded eight years ago when she was introduced to heroin as a way of dealing with some of the particularly nasty problems life was throwing at her. “Everything seemed to go away when I used it,” she [...]

The Independent report on deaths as a result of alcohol amongst young people:

The alcopops generation are drinking themselves to death, latest figures show.
Drink-related deaths among 15 to 34-year-olds have increased by almost 60 per cent since 1991. The Office for National Statistics (ONS), which published the figures yesterday, said 198 men and 89 women [...]

Parliamentary Question about making PSHE statutory:
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what factors were taken into account when deciding whether to include personal, social and health education as a statutory part of the National Curriculum.
Jim Knight: There has been ongoing consideration of the status of personal, social and health [...]

There’s a commentary on research looking at the correlation between age of first use of alcohol and alcoholism in the Adiction journal.  I would post some of what it says, but the site says that doing that costs over $300, so go there yourselves and see what it says in full.
In essense the paper suggests those who have [...]

The mother of the young woman who was interviewed by the Independent on Sunday has given an interview to the BBC:
The mother of a girl who started drinking at the age of 12 and became hooked at 14 is warning young children of the dangers of drinking.
At the height of her addiction Hayley Nash was [...]

Martin Barnes writing on the Druglink Blog has this to say about the ACMD report Pathways to Problems:
Last year the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) emphasised that preventative measures to tackle hazardous tobacco, alcohol and drug use among young people needed to be much broader than drug education. Prevention is about tackling child poverty, supporting families, the importance of stable family relationships, all ‘upstream’ issues highlighted by the [...]

Martin over at drugsfutures takes a look at some of the screening and testing of teenagers going on in the United States.  In particular they pick up on TeenScreen:
Substance abuse only appears as part of TeenScreen because it is said to be correlated with other mental health problems. But is this sort of testing going [...]