Drug Education News

The Guardian take a different tack on young people’s drinking than the BBC story we covered earlier today:
Thousands of children - most of them girls - are ending up in hospital in England every year because of binge drinking, according to figures released yesterday.
Statistics from the government’s information centre for health and social care reveal [...]

The BBC have a report on young people’s drinking:
Fewer teenagers are drinking regularly - partly because it is becoming harder for youngsters to get hold of alcohol, a Trading Standards survey suggests.
The number of those who say they never drink at all has climbed from 12% in 2005 to 17% in the latest poll, of [...]

Via the ever excellent Daily Dose I saw this piece of Australian research into a school based aclohol intervention which found:

The program was successful in teaching all young people, both males and females, the knowledge to minimise alcohol-related harm. It was also effective in moderating students’ beliefs regarding the positive benefits of alcohol. Students were [...]

The Evening Standard:
Britain is now the cocaine capital of Europe with soaring numbers of young people taking the drug, a United Nations report has revealed.
It revealed more than 900,000 Britons buy cocaine, which means the country has overtaken Spain as the biggest user in the continent.
In addition, Britain’s 350,000 heroin users are the largest number [...]

The Times report on some polling that Barnardos have done to support their campaign Believe in Children. They found:
that people believe the main threats to a happy childhood are growing up without a father (31 per cent), being brought up in care (27 per cent), teenage motherhood (18 per cent) and being expelled from [...]

The BBC say that the BMA are to debate whether they would like to see the age at which alcohol can legally be bought raised to 21:
Dr Chris Spencer-Jones, chairman of the BMA’s public health committee, said it was important to restrict access to alcohol to stop “young people forming bad habits”.He said: “Sales of [...]

Alcohol Concern (a Forum member) have a response to the alochol strategy, Safe Sensible Safe.  In the section on under-18s they say:
This [the actions the government propose] bodes well in relation to reducing alcohol harms among young people, however there is no mention of current work underway with the Blueprint project, nor of any action [...]

This is the presentation that Hajra Mir (Alcohol Concern) and I gave to the Drug Education Forum last week.

The Social Exclusion Task Force have recently published what they call the analysis and themes from the Families At Risk Review.
One of the areas they look at is drugs, where they say:
It is estimated that there are 250,000–350,000 children of problematic drug users* in the UK.94 2–3% of children under age 16 have at least [...]

Beverley Hughes on how young people:

Many young people I’ve spoken to say they feel let down by the constant negative portrayals of young people both in the press and among older generations. Every time we fail to listen to young people, or to take what they tell us seriously, we reaffirm these misconceptions when it [...]