Drug Education News

The BBC suggest that incoming Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, wants to see drug education starting in primary schools.

Drugs education schemes should start at primary school as part of an overhaul of Britain’s drugs strategy, Gordon Brown is to say.

And more role models are needed to raise awareness of drug use, which is still “unacceptably high”, he will say.

The chancellor will visit police in Birmingham before discussing gangs and drugs at a hustings event in Leicester.

These suggestions mirror some of the thinking outlined in the RSA’s report, Drugs - facing facts which also argued that there should be a greater emphasis on drug education in primary schools.

The Forum’s own report Involving Children and Young People in Drug Education has a number of examples where primary schools are already delivering the sort of schemes that Mr Brown is calling for.

From our point of view while we welcome the emphasis on starting drug education early we would be worried if this was at the expense of secondary education. We think that there are good reasons, based on how children develop their moral framework and their ability to access drugs, for making sure that schools and other educational settings deliver drug education to adolescents.

Forum members will be talking with the principle author of the RSA’s report in a few weeks time and it will be interesting to hear how they came to their conclusions and whether they and we can convince policy makers of the need for a spiral curriculum around drugs.