Drug Education News

This blog is taking a break until the beginning of September.
Until then I wish you all well.

The NHS has a factsheet for teenagers on the change in the law about age of sale:

From Monday, October 1st 2007 the law for selling tobacco will change. It will be illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone under the age of 18 (an increase from 16) in England and Wales. It is expected that the [...]

Community Care:
Dr Michael Fitzpatrick will suggest in Community Care next week that the rise of drug abuse among young children has coincided with the increase of drugs education.
He says: “Gordon Brown has endorsed the fashionable “drugs education”, particularly favouring its extension to primary schools. Here is another policy immune to the evidence of failure.
“Never mind [...]

My thanks to Lucy at the PSHE Subject Association for bringing the Healthy Kids Summit 2007 to my attention:
Mounting public and media interest in the wellbeing of children and young people has put increased pressure on those working in the area to prove results. We are ever more seeing the importance of tackling all aspects [...]

I’ve been asked to bring your attention to the following by Chris at Re-Solv.
Following extensive piloting the final version of this training resource will be launched at a one-day conference on VSA to be held in Stirling on Tues 4 September 2007.
Re-Solv is holding the conference jointly with Forth Valley Substance Action Team to re-focus [...]

Mental Health Foundation pick up a Press Association story:
Teenagers as young as 14 are being given pocket-sized guides to coping with the effects of drinking alcohol, it was revealed today.
About 100 credit card-sized information leaflets are being distributed to young people living in the Castle Vale housing estate in Birmingham.
One side features contact details for [...]

The Drug Education Forum has today submitted our views on the draft guidance that NICE are considering for school-based interventions on alcohol.
We covered the recommendations in an earlier post, and you’ll see that you have until 6 August to make your own response should you want to.
Our response supports the three recommendations that NICE have [...]

Can I bring your attention to the Alcohol Policy UK podcast this week.
Libby talks to Steve Evans a Mersyside paramedic who runs the Don’t Walk Away campaign:
Don’t Walk Away takes a hands-on approach to giving young people the knowledge about what to do when one of their group has consumed too much alcohol, by telling them [...]

From the NTA’s press release:
Rosanna O’Connor, NTA Director of Regional Management and member of the Youth Justice Board, explains: “We see this as a great opportunity to develop the young people’s treatment agenda to ensure that every young person (under 1 in England has access to specialist substance misuse treatment provision when they need [...]

Young People Now have a variety of views about whether the reclassification of cannabis will reduce the numbers of young people smoking it, but not as wide a range of opinion as they could have had.
They get three people to who say “no” and one who suggests “yes”.
I can reveal that I too was asked for [...]