Drugs and Young People

Back in 1994 the IPPR published a pamphlet called Drugs and Young People, and a quirk of the internet has led me to it today.

It’s not – at least judging from the pages that are available on-line – a measured look at what the situation was like back at the mid 1990s; rather it’s a blast at the policy positions of the then government and the practice that the authors observe, and a call for harm reduction based drug education and to decriminalise cannabis:

Drug education in this country needs to be restructured with radically different aims and objectives guiding a consistent policy across all relevant government Departments. And it needs to be properly resourced. Current government policy for drug education is tantamount to bad faith and disorganised hypocrisy. For example, the government has been repeatedly advised by the research community that tobacco and alcohol are the main health problems facing young people, but it obstinately persists in concentrating publicity and resources on the serious, but minor, problem of heroin addicts… Time and again independent evaluations have show that glitzy media campaigns against drug taking are ineffective but politicians persist in wasting millions of public money on them: razzmatazz is preferred to results. And the Department of Health, the Department for Education and the Home Office seems incapable of developing, funding and implementing a coordinated programme of drug education based on harm reduction.

I guess we’re still debating some of these issues today though with some different evidence. Tobacco and alcohol still don’t get the attention they deserve in the curriculum, government remain committed to public health information campaigns, and the legal status of cannabis remains fertile ground for a political, professional and academic punch up.

Filed under: drug education , ippr