Drug Education News

I’ve harped on about that how young people see celebrity drug takers is more complex than is often portrayed in the media; so it was refreshinig to see Jemima Owen piece in The Observer trys to explain the appeal of Amy Winehouse to teenagers:
While Winehouse is the first to admit that her behaviour is not an admirable example to [...]

Eric Carlin, Chief Executive of Mentor UK (and Chair of the Drug Education Forum), has a letter in the Society Guardian:
Mentor UK have studies showing that young people in rural areas are more at risk from falling into alcohol misuse and have identified boredom and a lack of hope and aspiration as specific problems.
We believe that [...]

Children & Young People Now catch up with the JRF research we covered here and here.  This piece picks up on the finding that supply is through friendship groups and how schools deal with those they catch:
Nearly half had been involved in supplying cannabis, but most considered this a social relationship rather than a commercial one.
The [...]

Mentor UK have been working with the Right Start International Foundation to run the Muslim Youth Involvement Project.
The output of the project will be a toolkit for those seeking to involve young Muslims in drug prevention.
The outcomes for the project are to:

Develop the skills, confidence and self esteem of young Muslims, providing them with the [...]

A bit beyond our beaten track , but perhaps of interest to those of you thinking about producind resources for schools. The Guardian report on research about how teachers are coping with new technologies:
A third of teachers struggle to use the technology schools are equipped with and want more support and training, the National Foundation for [...]

Drug and Alcohol Findings has an interesting article on the use of normative messages to the general public in Canada.
More widely the piece points out:
Approaches based on correcting normative beliefs have been found effective in previous research, but with selected targets and incorporated in a less minimal intervention. Correcting these beliefs has been shown to be [...]

The publicity for ACPO’s new policy guidance on children and young people happened a little while ago, but they’ve now published it on their website so I thought I’d take a look.
Writing in the forward Roger Baker, Chief Constable, Essex Police and Chairman ACPO Youth Issues Group, says:
This overarching strategy is essential in setting out the [...]

DDN has an article from Kevin Wilson is chief executive of The Albert Centre, a drug and alcohol charity based in Middlesbrough, where he takes a view on the idea that the age at which alcohol can be bought should be raised or that there should be an across the board price rise.
On tax he [...]

Children & Young People Now cover commitments given by the government to introduce an advertising campaign to target young people’s binge drinking.
The government is to urge young people to stop binge drinking with the use of similar methods to anti-smoking adverts, with a campaign launching in the spring.
The Department of Health is believed to be [...]

Following on from the two recent posts about Narconon, Max from Druglink has been in touch to ask:
I am researching a news focus story for March’s Druglink magazine on the extent to which Scientologists/Narconon have spread drug education booklets and advice among children in and outside school in the UK.
I want to put our readers [...]