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His team questioned 328 ecstasy users, who had an average age of 22. Those taking ecstasy for more than six years remained positive about it, the British Psychological Society heard. Maybe they've learned ways of coping with the negative effects, such as taking different drugs

Dr Murphy said explaining that ecstasy can cause paranoia, depression or anxiety to these hard-core users was a waste of time. The results of his survey showed that while the young people involved saw taking ecstasy as a positive experience at first, the feelings of euphoria and closeness to others it produced became less pronounced.

Some gave up the drug, finding its after-effects too unpleasant, but it was noticeable that those who had been taking ecstasy for more than six years continued to view the drug positively.

Dr Murphy was speaking at the British Psychological Society's annual conference at Imperial College, London. He said there could be a positive balance to the results. "Maybe they've learned ways of coping with the negative effects, such as taking different drugs, for example," he said. "They still think it's worthwhile and part of their lifestyle."

Instead of telling such users about the downside to the drug, Dr Murphy said it was better to emphasise the kind of social damage ecstasy could inflict - such as broken relationships and its impact on a person's employment prospects. Health aspects the users might not be aware of could also be highlighted, such as memory impairment.

Giving these warnings earlier would also help, he added. Another study led by researchers at Liverpool John Moores University showed that taking ecstasy damaged long-term memory.

Netherlands moves to outlaw superstrong 'skunk' cannabis
By Anthony Browne

The Times April 14, 2004

THE sale of certain types of cannabis could be banned in the Netherlands amid concern that they have become so powerful they could have the same addictive and psychological impact as hard drugs.

The Dutch Government said that it would ban the most powerful forms of cannabis, such as “skunk”, after research showed that they had doubled in strength in the past few years and could now be classified as a hard drug.

Levels of THC — tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychologically active ingredient — in skunk have almost doubled from 9 per cent in 1999 to 15 per cent now, according to the Trimbos Institute, a drug research institute that monitors cannabis sales for the Health Ministry. The rise is due to new professional growing techniques. The institute said: “It has almost doubled in strength but we don’t know what the effect on public health is.”

Skunk has now become one of the most popular forms of cannabis on sale in the Netherlands. Between 2.5 per cent and 3 per cent of the Dutch population regularly use cannabis and there are between 30,000 and 80,000 cannabis addicts. However, it is not clear whether stronger cannabis means that more people are likely to become addicted or develop other psychological problems.

The Dutch Cabinet agreed last week to commission research to determine whether skunk is as dangerous as hard drugs, and this week will lay legislation before parliament to ban its sale if it is found to be harmful.

Opposition parties said that if soft drugs became illegal, authorities would lose supervision over their trade and use.

The Government has agreed a series of measures to clamp down on the industry. Selling cannabis has been banned near schools and near Dutch borders with other countries, to try to stop smuggling. Police have closed half the coffee shops in Amsterdam in the past few years and ministers want to combat “cannabis tourism” by allowing cannabis to be sold only to Dutch nationals.

Sam Jones
Friday April 9, 2004
The Guardian

A 17-year-old public schoolboy choked to death on his own vomit after drinking beer, vodka and tequila while on a school trip to Germany, it emerged yesterday. Friends and paramedics tried to revive Nicholas Ireland, from Weybridge, Surrey, but he died in the early hours of last Friday.

He and 12 other pupils from King's College School in Wimbledon had travelled to Hamburg to visit an atom-smashing laboratory for their A-level physics studies. A Hamburg police spokeswoman said that Nicholas and three friends got very drunk on beer and spirits in their room at the Schanzenstern hostel in the Ottensen district.

"Nicholas Ireland collapsed, and his classmates, who were also very drunk, tried to revive him before raising the alarm," she said. A postmortem examination found Nicholas had consumed a large amount of alcohol, vomited and then choked to death. Police have questioned the boys but are not treating the death as suspicious.

The trip was immediately called off by the two teachers in charge. Nicholas's parents, Margaret and Douglas, were informed of his death by the British embassy the same day. "It's a terrible tragedy, it's a waste of a young life," Mrs Ireland said yesterday. "The other three boys who were with Nicholas have got to live with this for the rest of their lives and they are grieving."

The headmaster of the £11,730-a-year school in south-west London, Anthony Evans, wrote a letter to the parents of all 1,200 pupils. In the letter he offers sympathy to the victim's parents and praises the teachers' organisation and conduct of the tour.

Government told it is losing war on child drug taking
Telegraph
01/04/2004
The war on drug taking among children is having little or no impact, with figures released yesterday showing that the problem in England is getting worse.Millions of pounds of government money has been spent in recent years on school programmes to discourage children from drinking, taking drugs and smoking.

The latest survey among 11- to 15-year-olds showed that one in five took drugs in 2003, an increase of one per cent on the previous year.

A quarter of these children drank alcohol regularly, also a one per cent increase. Children who drank were taking more than one drink a day. The average amount drunk each week was 9.5 units. Regular smoking was down by one per cent to nine per cent.

The survey of 10,000 children in 321 schools covered a full range of illegal substances, including cannabis, amphetamines, anabolic steroids, cocaine, crack, ecstasy, glue and solvents. Cannabis and "poppers" (amphetamines)[sic]were the drugs most likely to have been taken. Eight per cent of children, as young as 11, had taken drugs in 2003 compared with six per cent in 2002.

Drug use rose sharply with age. By the time they were 15, 38 per cent had taken drugs compared with 36 per cent in 2002. The number of 11-year-olds offered drugs rose from 16 per cent to 19 per cent.

Martin Barnes, the chief executive of the charity Drugscope, said: "We are particulary concerned about the small but nonetheless disturbing increase in the use of volatile substances. Around eight per cent of young people have used them in the last year."

Last year £15.2 million was given to the Education Department for drug education and prevention projects. This has been reduced by £1 million.

Tim Loughton, the shadow health secretary, said: "It is unsurprising that the Government is losing the war against drugs when funding to support drug education and prevention has been cut by almost £1 million."
A Health Department spokesman said: "We are working with the Home Office and the Department for Education and Skills to reduce drug use and are looking to create long-term change of attitude, which will take time."

Danger of playground drug culture
28.3.04
Observer

Biggest-ever study shows pupils getting hooked early as they ignore school warnings,

Children as young as 13 are starting to experiment with drugs and these early users are more likely to move on to hard drugs such as heroin, the biggest-ever survey of addicts reveals. The study discovered a big gap between the onset of drug use as a child and the point at which treatment is sought. Most addicts seek help only when they reach 25.

'The survey reveals a picture of people who began use at 13 or 14 years and were taking a mixture of drugs and alcohol and tobacco, not just cannabis,' said Peter Martin, chief executive of Addaction, the charity which carried out the study, 'Collecting the Evidence', to be published on Tuesday.

'By the time a young person does enter treatment with us, it will take so much more to turn their lives around because they are so much more likely to have lost their health, their education, job prospects and their potential to lead balanced, useful lives,' he said.

The survey highlighted an absence of accessible treatment centres for young people and a failure by school drug programmes in conveying their message to children. 'There is still a huge amount of ignorance and stigma around drugs misuse among those who have responsibility to care for children, right across society, its educational institutions and public services,' said Martin.

Chris was 13 when he first smoked cannabis. By 14, he had started drinking. At 15, he took his first LSD tablet and when he was 17, he developed a heroin addiction that would last 11 years. 'I have a good family,' said Chris, now 29. 'My father is an engineer and my mum works at a chemist's. I started taking drugs because of peer pressure: if I hadn't, I would have drifted away from my friends. 'Starting with drugs at 13-years-old made it much more likely that I would end up on heroin,' he added. 'I never learnt healthy ways to deal with the usual teenage angst. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing with my life but heroin gave me loads of confidence. 'My body was so small at 13 that cannabis had the most dramatic, hallucinogenic effect on me,' he said. 'As I grew up, I had to move on to harder and harder drugs to get the same high.'

Chris believes that if he hadn't started experimenting so young, he might not have taken drugs at all. 'I would have had more time discovering how to live a drug-free life,' he said. 'I could have learnt to like life and to take part in it. Now I've got nothing except a criminal record: no education, no home, no friends. What sort of a life can I ever hope to lead?'

The number of 13-year-olds taking drugs is a minority, but growing, says Jenny McWirter, head of education and prevention at DrugScope, the centre for drugs expertise.

'Drugs are so much part of the social landscape nowadays and the pressures on 13-year-olds are so much greater, that they are increasingly likely to turn to illegal substances to help them through the period,' she said.

Addaction's survey findings were backed by Professor Neil McKeganey, an expert in drug misuse research at Glasgow University who recently completed a survey for the Department of Health on drug exposure and use among young children.

'Pre-teen illegal drug use is on the increase,' said McKeganey. 'By 13, the numbers of children who have experimented with illegal drugs is over one-third, with 20 per cent having tried hard drugs such as LSD, magic mushrooms and ecstasy. 'But the belief that drug use is very largely the product of peer pressure acting on passive young adolescents is almost certainly wrong,' he added. 'There is a complex dynamic in operation whereby children agree to try drugs as a result of curiosity, attempts at persuasion and their own desire to conform to the group.'

According to Addaction's survey, pre-teen illegal drug use is more common among boys than girls, and becomes increasingly common as they get older. A child who has someone in the family who uses illegal drugs is five times more likely than their peers to have initiated drug use themselves.

McKeganey found that despite the growing numbers of pre-teen drug use, there are still very few services to help such children. 'The service providers felt the problem was increasing but it was not a problem they were directly engaging with,' he said.

'Very few providers were aware of joint protocols between children's services and drug treatment services in their area. At least half of those we spoke to felt seriously under-equipped to meet the needs of pre-teen drug users,' he said. 'I'm in no doubt that we need focused support services for them.'

The survey was welcomed by independent campaigners who are fighting to improve awareness of drugs among children. Glen Banks is founder and co-ordinator of a new scheme in Northamptonshire that takes school pupils aged between 12 and 18 into Wellingborough prison to speak to recovering addicts.

'The age at which children are being introduced to hard drugs is getting younger and younger,' said Banks. 'Children of 13 are doing far more than smoking cannabis; most move quickly on to solvents and butane gas, and then to ecstasy. 'It's not just troubled 13-year-olds who are taking hard drugs; drugs have no barriers and we live in such a drug culture now that it's hard for a youngster to resist the peer pressure to try ever harder things.'

Alastair Lang, chief executive of Drug Abuse Resistance Education UK, a charity that works in 457 primary schools and three secondary schools nationwide, has designed drug education classes for seven-year-olds.

'The secret of drug education is holding children off using drugs until they have got through their teens, but the extent to which drugs are now available means we have to start teaching them how to resist drugs from the age of seven,' he said.

Drug orders failing, says watchdog
26.3.04
Guardian

Eight out of 10 convicted substance abusers handed a drug testing and treatment order by the courts are reconvicted within two years, a study published today reveals.

A report, for the National Audit Office (NAO), found that only 28% of the programmes terminated last year were completed in full by the offenders. Completion rates varied "considerably" across the country from 71% in Dorset to just 8% in Kent. The reconviction rate for those who finished the treatment was 53%.

Under the orders, known as DTTOs, offenders must have two drug tests a week and initially complete between 12 and 20 hours of contact a week with probation workers and counsellors.

Sir John Bourn, head of the NAO, said: "The order can help some offenders turn their lives around and reduce their use of drugs. However, the high drop-out rate and evidence from pilots of the order of a high rate of reconviction need to be addressed."

The scheme was rolled out by the government across England and Wales in October 2000 to combat drug misuse and crime. More than 18,400 orders had been imposed until December 2003.

Ministers allocated nearly £54m to the project across England and Wales in the 2003-2004 financial year.

Home Office minister Paul Goggins said: "We know that treatment can make a real difference and the longer someone can be kept on a DTTO the better chance of reducing the level of drug use and offending.

"The challenge now is twofold. First, to make the DTTO available to a greater number and a wider range of offenders; and secondly to improve retention and completion rates."

DTTOs were first piloted in 1998 to give drug testing, treatment and supervision for criminals addicted to Class A drugs. Over 50 % of orders were breached in the pilot. But now, the drop-out rate is much higher.

Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the commons' public accounts committee, said the "dreadfully low" number of offenders completing the courses was of great concern.

He said: "Much more needs to be done to ensure offenders comply with the terms of the order. By next year the government wants to double the number of DTTOs that are issued to 12,000 a year. That is good, but the Home Office needs to make sure that the extent of the scheme is matched with the delivery of reduced drug misuse and offending, if we're to reach our goal of a safer society."

Despite low completion rates, auditors recognised that DTTOs could be a successful community sentence for some drug misusing offenders who might otherwise have been jailed. "It can help some addicts reduce the level and frequency of their drug misuse," the NAO report said.

The DTTOs cost between £5,200 and £7,600 per order which equates to between £25 and £37 a day. Auditors found this to be less expensive than keeping someone in prison, which costs around £100 a day.

But campaigners say that while the scheme is "sound" in principle, the practical expectations are unrealistic.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of probation union Napo, said: "DTTOs are a sound idea in principle but the government's obsession with targets means that people are being sentenced to these orders who have very little hope of completion. What we need is quality rather than quantity."

Richard Kramer, head of policy at Turning Point, a support group for alcohol and drug abusers and people with mental health and learning disabilities, said that DTTOs "narrowly" focus on meeting people's needs.

He said: "DTTOs have a critical role to play but the structure and delivery of the scheme needs to be reassessed. There is an urgency to recognise after-care and mental health needs, and prioritise individual treatment."

Mr Kramer said that while DTTOs were geared towards heroin dependency, they were less effective in areas such as alcohol misuse.

He suggested that courts should took a central role in monitoring the DTTOs, and that agencies that treated convicted substance users deployed better methods in recording figures and data.

The shadow home secretary, David Davis, said: "Labour's flagship policy on drugs has fallen far short of their bold claims. With such high drop-out rates and massive levels of re-offending, it's time to go back to the drawing board.

"We need proper, abstinence-based treatment for hard drug addicts, that places a much bigger emphasis on getting people to complete treatment and give up for good."

Warning over risk to teenagers who 'slip off face of society'
24.3.04
Independent

Up to 15,000 children a year are thrown out of home by abusive or neglectful parents, a report revealed today. Young teenagers who are forced on to the streets are most at risk because they often "slip off the face of society", experts warned.

The Children's Society said that a lack of access to benefits and fears that they may be sent back to an abusive family or put into care mean that many youngsters end up sleeping rough and being lured into drugs and prostitution.

The organisation is calling for a national network of safe houses for those younger than 16 who are forced out of home. Presently, services are patchy and there is only one refuge in Britain specifically for young people.

The Children's Society's report, called Thrown Away, estimates that there are about 129,000 "running away" incidents involving youngsters each year.

While the majority of runaways return within less than 24 hours and many are a simple case of teenage arguments with parents boiling over, the charity found that up to 15,000 youngsters a year are forced out of home because of abuse or neglect. It is the first time that experts have focused on the problems faced by children who are thrown out of home, rather than those who run away of their own volition.

The research found that children who are forcibly made homeless are at much more risk than other runaways.

One in three of "thrown out" children have suffered violence at home, compared with 11 per cent of runaways. While 40 per cent of runaway children are reported to the police, only 23 per cent of those who have been thrown out are registered as missing.

Children younger than 16 also have no legal access to benefits, so opt to sleep rough rather than be returned home or taken into care. One in five youngsters who had been thrown out of home said they had been physically or sexually abused while sleeping rough or staying with people who had offered them help.

Tim Linehan, the assistant director of campaigns at the Children's Society, said: "These are the children who are going to end up most at risk, and yet they have the least access to help and services.

"With a normal runaway, their parents will phone the police and report them missing, but a parent who has thrown a child out of home is hardly then going to report them missing.

"The scandal is that these children just disappear off the radar, because no one - social services, their parents, the police - picks them up.

"These are exactly the type of young people who are targeted by people like Rose and Fred West - vulnerable teenagers who have slipped off the face of society without trace."

He added: "What is most alarming and tragic is that the people these children turn to are the people who end up abusing them. Youngsters turn to these people because they simply have no other option."

The charity is calling for better access to benefits for 16-and 17-year-olds, who face a "hard slog" to get housing and support if they live away from home.

STARVING, COLD AND TERRIFIED

Chris, 15, was happy at home until his mother's boyfriend moved in. "He was always violent towards me, hitting and shouting abuse at me," he said. "I never fought back. I was too afraid of him. My mother always sided with him."

As the violence got worse, Chris struggled to keep up at school. Last year, he ran away to a friend's house. He carried on going to school, but eventually his friend's parents refused to let him stay any longer.

He tried sleeping rough. He said: "I was afraid the druggies and drunks would attack me when I was asleep. I found a field. It was winter and I was freezing. I had only my clothes to keep me warm."

Starving, cold, and terrified, Chris tried to return home. But his mother's boyfriend threw him out. Chris said: "I squatted in an old, empty house for two to three months with no heating or electricity. I was really miserable but my family didn't want me and I couldn't go to my friends ... I tried to get help but no one took me seriously."

Chris is now being helped by the Children's Society and is studying for GCSEs, but he says: "Things are still really tough. I've got so much on my mind, like why this happened to me, where am I going to live?"

The rise of the police sniffer dog

Sniffer dogs infringe our rights,

Wednesday March 24, 2004
The Guardian

Dogs can pick up on scents untraceable by a human nose. Cannabis probably isn't the first example to spring to mind; explosives might be. While the difficulty of detecting explosives and the severity of the threat they pose might justify "letting the dogs out", surprisingly few of the growing army of police dogs are trained in the detection of these substances. A large number are dedicated to the detection of drugs.
Over the past two years, drug-detection dog initiatives have been breeding across the country. Police forces are deploying the dogs on train stations and under "voluntary" schemes with licensees, in pubs and clubs (find me a landlord willing to risk their licence by saying they don't want to take part in the scheme). The justification behind these initiatives is to reduce the terror that drug users wreak on communities by detecting and deterring them.

The dogs and their handlers are trained to pick up the scent of drugs on individuals. The person doesn't have to carry drugs for the scent to be detected. The dog can smell if someone has been in close contact with drug users, for example at a party where cannabis was smoked. It is taught to bark at the person who smells of drugs, or if the dog is trained as a "passive dog", to sit next to that person.

According to the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), a reaction from the dog provides the officer with grounds to stop and search. About a year ago I witnessed one of these operations and I asked the officer the purpose of the exercise. He told me: "Often we've got no grounds to stop and search. A lot of people use drugs. The dog picks up the scent and then we can search them." Recently, at Walthamstow station in east London more than 100 searches were conducted on commuters. Only 16 of those searched were arrested.

The idea that the reaction of a dog provides the police with sufficient grounds to stop and search has not yet been challenged in a British court. This is despite the questionable reliability of a dog's behaviour. Apart from scientific studies proving that dogs can get it wrong, tests have shown that in addition to responding to the tiniest of tugs on the leash by the handler, dogs can react to note-taking and facial movements in the hope of pleasing the handler by picking up the "right" answer. Even a highly trained police dog handler will be uncertain of the smell the dog is reacting to.

If a dog is a tool used by law enforcement to conduct surveillance on private citizens, then a dog's deployment is an intrusion into a citizen's privacy. There is something unpleasantly undignified about being "sniffed". There is no possibility of consenting to being sniffed when confronted with police dogs on exiting an underground station. One police officer said that merely attempting to evade a dog sniff provides grounds for stop and search - although Acpo states that a dog sniff does not amount to a search.

In New Zealand the courts found that dog sniffs constituted illegal searches and the government was forced to introduce legislation to permit them.

Stop and search is regulated to ensure that interference with the rights of the individual is kept to a minimum. Reasonable suspicion cannot be based on generalisations, but the justification for the deployment of drug detection dogs is based on precisely that. The generalisation that drug users commit crime is rooted in testing the number of criminals who use drugs rather than the number of drug users who commit crime.

The British Crime Survey 2000 estimated that 30% of 20- to 24-year-olds had used drugs in the past year. That's a lot of people to bark at. In 1971, the Misuse of Drugs Act was not considered to substantially interfere with the liberty of individuals because the number of drug users was small. The Home Office noted that if drug use became more widespread the continued ban of the substances could cause public disturbance. For me, the prevalence of sniffer dogs in public places illustrates that this point has now been reached; a resource that might justifiably be deployed in preventing the bloodshed of unsuspecting commuters is instead being used to detect and punish those who choose to consume illicit substances.

Victims face tests as police probe 'urban myth' of rape drugs
The Times
14.3.04

WOMEN alleging sex attacks will be tested to find out if their drinks have been spiked in a nationwide study to discover whether date-rape drugs are an urban myth.
Five police forces across England will carry out drug and alcohol tests on all women who claim to have been raped or assaulted over one weekend next month.

The study has been prompted by an explosion in claims of date rape linked to drugs such Rohypnol and GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate), which make a victim drowsy, compliant and unable to remember what has happened to them.

Despite the claims, there has been no successful prosecution for the use of Rohypnol and some police officers believe the threat could be more imagined than real. They are backed by experts who say heavy consumption of alcohol is more likely to make women vulnerable to attack.

The study is being led by Derbyshire police and will include forces in Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Northumberland and London.

Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Gee, of Derbyshire police, said: "The myth of Rohypnol has been generated by people talking about it all the time, not by any evidence.

"It has never been identified in any of the samples at the Weatherby forensic science laboratory, which does most of the testing for the north of England. There hasn't been a single case successfully taken to court in the UK. Rohypnol is so notoriously difficult to get hold of, you are extremely unlikely to have it in your drink."

Doctors also question whether drug rape actually exists. One forensic doctor said: "We get situations where women admit to having had 20 units of alcohol in a week. We have to ask, 'Which of the 20 vodkas do you think was spiked?'" Dr Cath White is clinical director of the St Mary's centre in Manchester, one of seven sexual assault referral centres participating in the study. She insists alcohol consumption is the greatest risk factor for rape.

"There has been a huge increase in allegations of drug-facilitated rape. We are involved in this research to find out whether this is an urban myth or a real issue. No one really knows. There has not been a proven case of rape using Rohypnol, but if you pick up women's magazines you would think it was widespread. We get the feeling there are drugs out there but I think the biggest problem is alcohol."

During the trial, women alleging rape will give a urine sample that will be tested for traces of drugs and alcohol. Although urine samples are frequently taken from victims, they are not routinely analysed. The tests are expensive and are not carried out unless police are pressing ahead with an investigation.

Rape support workers blame the police for the absence of a Rohypnol conviction. Rohypnol leaves the bloodstream after about six hours and is not detectable in urine after 72 hours, which means tests must be taken immediately.

A recent police survey at a nightclub in Chelmsford, Essex, found eight drinks out of 200 were spiked.

Graham Rhodes, founder of the Roofie Foundation, a support group for victims of drug rape, said: "Are we saying the 6,000 people who have called our helpline claiming to have been drug-raped are lying?"

'Pay addicts not to have children'
BBC
9.3.04

Women drug addicts should be paid to take contraception to stop them having children, according to a drugs expert. Professor Neil McKeganey, from the Centre for Drug Misuse Research, said there was a crisis in meeting the needs of children born to drug using mothers.

The professor has called for a system where women are paid to take long-term contraception to prevent pregnancies. Campaign group Scotland Against Drugs called for more support services and warned against infringing human rights.

Prof McKeganey surveyed 1,000 drug users and found that more than 60% of addicted mothers and 85% of addicted fathers no longer looked after their children. He said the situation must change and blamed the "chaotic lifestyles" of addicts for the problem and its effects on children. His research suggests that more than 50,000 children in Scotland have been exposed to drug addiction at home.

It found a number had even woken up to find their parents had died from an overdose while others had had their Christmas presents sold to pay for drugs.

"It does look as if, in many instances, female drug users are becoming pregnant not because they want to but because of the sheer chaos of their lifestyle," he said.

He said that in parts of the United States, female drug users were given government cash to take long-term contraception, such as injections.

And he warned: "We now have such a crisis in Scotland that we ought to give active consideration to paying female drug users to take long-term contraception."

Professor McKeganey also suggested that drug addicts who were already parents could be given a year to kick the habit or face the prospect of having their children put up for adoption.

Scotland Against Drugs said it recognised there was a problem but said children in these situations must be supported. It has called on more education and help for mothers and improved services for looking after their children.

Director Alistair Ramsey said: "I think it's a bit Draconian to suggest that contraception injections should be an option when it's not known in advance whether the recipient woman would be a good or a bad parent."

Catholic Church spokesman Peter Kearney said: "If you are going to sterilise drug-addicted women, why stop there? Why not sterilise alcoholics? This is social engineering on a massive scale and it's completely unacceptable."

A spokesman for the Scottish Executive said it was well aware of the risks to the children of drug using parents.

He said: "We believe that the needs of the child should be paramount and have published guidelines for service providers entitled Getting our Priorities Right. Along with other UK departments, we are currently considering our response to the Hidden Harm report on the children of drug using parents."

Government tackles cost of binge drinking

Guardian/Press Association
15.3.04

The government today called on pubs, clubs and the drinks industry to help reduce the £20bn-a-year social, economic and healthcare costs of Britain's binge drinking culture.

The alcohol harm reduction strategy for England, published today, calls for clearer labelling of drinks so people can check whether they are consuming more than the recommended levels of alcohol - 21 units a week for men and 14 for women.

The report by the prime minister's strategy unit also want the drinks industry to better promote sensible drinking on alcoholic products.

The strategy unit said the communications watchdog Ofcom will review the code of practice for TV adverts to make sure they did not glamorise alcohol or encourage underage drinking.

It also recommended formalising voluntary schemes where the drinks industry helps fund alcohol education programmes and research into the effects of excessive drinking.

Pubs and bars will be encouraged to contribute towards the costs of policing crime and disorder caused by excessive alcohol consumption.

Under local "corporate social responsibility" schemes, they could also provide transport home for drinkers and pay for marshals to help keep the peace in city centres at closing time.

To combat crime and disorder caused by alcohol misuse, the strategy calls for better enforcement of existing laws to tackle antisocial behaviour and underage drinking.

It urges the police to make greater use of exclusion orders to ban problem drinkers from pubs and town and city centres, and to increase the use of fixed penalty fines for those causing a nuisance on the streets.

Home Office minister Hazel Blears said: "In many areas the police, local councils and the drinks industry are all working together to combat the problems like underage drinking, anti-social behaviour and drink fuelled violence.

"Our strategy will widen this approach so that people are more aware of the dangers of excessive drinking, that advertising doesn't promote irresponsible drinking and the violent behaviour in our city centres is reduced."

In a bid to improve NHS alcohol services, healthcare staff will receive more training so they can better recognise problems such as binge and chronic drinking. The Department of Health (DoH) will pilot schemes to help identify alcohol problems at an earlier stage in order to deal with problems before they get worse.

There will be an audit to identify the most effective treatment services for alcoholics and to check whether they can meet growing demand. The prime minister, Tony Blair said the government accepted all the report's conclusions.

"It is vital that individuals can make informed and responsible decisions about their own levels of alcohol consumption. Everyone needs to be able to balance their right to enjoy a drink with the potential risks to their own - and others' - health and wellbeing."

The Home Office and DoH will now work with other government departments to implement the strategy. A Cabinet committee will monitor the implementation of its recommendations by using key indicators of success, such as whether the numbers dying from alcohol-related causes starts to drop.

Yesterday, a leaked letter from the home secretary, David Blunkett, to the prime minister, revealed in the Sunday Times, warned that drink-related disorder risked spiralling out of control.

Mr Blunkett said the "situation at night in our towns and city centres raises serious concerns about the control of alcohol-related crime and disorder".

Ms Blears said that the government would keep under review whether there might be a need for more coercive approach to reduce alcohol misuse. "At this stage we have said we will have a voluntary scheme. We have also said we will review it early in the next parliament. If it isn't making a significant impact on reducing these problems of crime and disorder, starting to change the culture, then we will look at further measures including possible regulation," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "But I think this voluntary approach initially says to those bars, 'This is a serious situation, come on board with us, be part of a partnership'."

Ms Blears told GMTV that the government hoped pubs and clubs would join "corporate social responsibility" schemes to promote safer drinking and reduce antisocial behaviour in city centres. "It is in industry's own best interests to make sure that the city centre is safe, it is a place where people can come and enjoy themselves and that means that their profits are up as well. "It is a win-win for everybody here. We are saying in the strategy today we want all of industry to be in these partnerships at a local level, making a contribution and helping us to get a better way of dealing with alcohol in our society."

Highlighting Manchester, where a safe city centre scheme was in operation where were partners, Ms Blears said pubs and clubs help pay policing costs and contributed to the funding of "taxi marshals" to help people get home safely.

Alcohol misuse costs Britain at least £20bn a year, according to the prime minister's strategy. This includes £1.7bn was spent by the NHS, £6.4bn lost due to missing work, and £7.3bn spent on tackling alcohol-related crime.

The deaths of an estimated 15,000 to 22,000 people every year are linked to alcohol.

'Almost 250,000 deaths' during wait for alcohol strategy
11.3.04
Guardian

In the six years it has taken the government to produce a national strategy to combat the negative effects of alcohol misuse almost a quarter of a million people have died because of booze, the Liberal Democrats claim.

Lib Dem health spokesman Paul Burstow's claims come the day after brewing company Carling was criticised for advertising the health benefits of lager and a day before the expected publication of the government's much-anticipated alcohol strategy.

Mr Burstow points to "shocking" Department of Health figures that show 40,000 alcohol-related deaths in England and Wales every year.

The prime minister's strategy unit announced plans to tackle problems related to alcohol in 1998. That would put the total of deaths due to alcohol misuse at 240,000 while the harm reduction strategy has been in development.

Mr Burstow said he hopes that after a six-year wait for the strategy, it will not take another six to deliver results.

He added: "Ministers have sat back and done nothing in the face of rising levels of binge drinking. The prime minister must charge the secretary of state for health to spearhead a cross-government approach to public health and an end to the confusing and conflicting messages coming from different departments."

A strategy unit spokesman said: "We're civil servants and it's not for us to comment on what ministers say. We've taken it forward as quickly as possible while carrying out a proper consultation process."

In its interim report the prime minister's strategy unit estimated that the annual alcohol-related costs of crime and public disorder were £7.3bn, workplace costs £6.4bn and health costs £1.7bn. Up to one-third of all accident and emergency admissions were due to alcohol.

Yesterday the Advertising Standards Authority upheld complaints against a campaign by international brewing giant Coors, which owns Carling. It said an insert for the beer company in trade magazine The Grocer made many misleading assertions. Among them were claims that beer was "an excellent source of vitamins, especially B vitamins, and minerals such as magnesium and potassium", and could protect against heart disease and reduce blood pressure.

Tomorrow the government is expected to publish its strategy to reduce the harm caused by excessive alcohol consumption. It is believed the prime minister's unit will suggest measures such as giving local authorities instead of magistrates the responsibility of issuing drinks licences.

Another anticipated proposal is for the government to highlight existing schemes that should be used as best practice guidelines, such as banning problem drinkers and a project in which local pubs share information about them.

This is similar to how police monitored habitual drinkers nearly 100 years ago, when mugshots and personal descriptions were included on cards featuring banned drinkers and distributed to landlords. If a pub was found to be serving a banned drinker, the landlord could be fined £10.

Today Wiltshire market town Devizes announced plans to ban weekend drinking by under-21s. The Pubwatch scheme is backed by police, the town council, the chamber of commerce and all three major supermarkets in the town.

Super-heroin dealers target middle classes

7.3.04
The Observer

Drug traffickers are targeting middle-class Britons with high-purity heroin that users prefer to smoke rather than inject, says a new United Nations drug agency report.
Tailoring products to meet the sensitivities of those British users who find injection repulsive will create a wider market for the drug, warns the International Narcotics Control Board.

'The illicit market operates in a very smart way, selling a drug to a new class of users by telling them, "Use it in a different way and you won't become addicted",' said Rainer Wolfgang Schmid, a board member.

'Middle-class users will not inject when they start taking heroin, but when they become addicted, which they certainly will, they will move on to injection and then the other problems kick in.'

The board, an independent UN body that monitors global drug trafficking and use, said a flood of high-grade heroin from Afghanistan to Britain, combined with the new marketing tactic, would boost the numbers of those prepared to experiment with the drug.

'Injection has become very unattractive to young people, especially in Britain, because of its link to HIV,' said Dr Herbert Schaepe, who is the board's secretary. 'Trafficking groups who want to continue to make money are constantly looking for new illicit marketing strategies to increase their profits, and this is one of their cleverest tricks yet,' he added.

'The heroin coming in from Afghanistan now is so pure that smoking it will give users enough of a kick to get them hooked,' he said. 'The dealers tell new users heroin isn't addictive if smoked, but it's not true: heroin is heroin, however it's used.'

The board's annual report also warns that the price of the drug is falling due to the increasing level of production in Afghanistan of opium poppies, the raw material for heroin.

The UK has more than 270,000 heroin and crack cocaine addicts, only 57,000 of them registered as users, according to the British Crime Survey. 'This is a depressing indication of how weak a grip the Government has on users and how little idea they have of the genuine scale of the problem,' said a Home Office source.

Opium production had almost stopped in Afghanistan, the main source of the UK's heroin, but since the Taliban were ousted from power two years ago it has been higher than ever. Some 3,600 tons of opium was produced in Afghanistan last year, 6 per cent more than in 2002. This was nearly 80 per cent of world cultivation and was the source of three-quarters of the heroin sold in Western Europe.

'The distribution networks for heroin are sophisticated, and the determination and ingenuity of dealers and local distributors should not be underestimated,' said a spokeswoman for the National Criminal Intelligence Service.

'Although the service has so far no proof that the middle- class market for heroin is increasing, we've seen with crack cocaine that dealers will always look to exploit complex new markets and opportunities to maximise their profits,' she added.

The Government reclassified cannabis to allow the police to focus on serious drugs such as heroin, but the UN has warned that this strategy could be undone if street prices for the drug fall as a result of rising supply.

'We're highly aware that traffickers constantly change their marketing to get a toehold in new markets,' said a Home Office spokeswoman. 'This is a problem being faced by the United States and we are working with them to tackle it together.'

Comment: This report is frankly bizarre and, had it come out a few days later could have passed as an April Fool's story.

As anyone with an iota of sense will be aware that all the brown heroin coming out of Afghanistan is primarily base heroin for smoking. This report seems to suggest that people had previously not been smoking heroin or not thought that they could become dependent through this route. A weird story.

The Department of Health and the Prison Service appeared to be at odds last night over a needle-cleansing programme designed to protect prisoners from blood-borne infections such as HIV and hepatitis.

From April 1, inmates will be given disinfecting tablets similar to those used for sterilising babies' bottles. But health department officials said last night that cleansing tablets were not the best way to protect against the transmission of diseases.

"I don't think we would encourage this as being as effective as the issuing of sterile needles," a spokesman said. "We don't recommend it. We regard the needle exchange programmes in place throughout the whole of the [health] system as the most effective way of reducing blood-borne diseases."

A disinfecting scheme was tried in 1995, but was later withdrawn for safety reasons.
Doctors and drug-user support groups have also challenged the move, saying a needle exchange scheme would be safer and more effective.

Critics claim ministers fear that the introduction of a needle exchange scheme would be a tacit admission of the scale of the drug problem in prisons.

"There is no foolproof way of cleaning injection equipment - it is easy to get the cleaning process wrong," said Michael Linnell of Lifeline, a drug support agency.

"You could be encouraging people to share because they think the equipment has been cleaned. That increases the risk of spreading blood-borne viruses."

A Prison Service spokesman said the cleansing tablets were being introduced rather than needle exchange schemes because they allowed drug users to keep their equipment clean in a less ostentatious way.

He added: "These tablets can be used to clean a variety of things. Drug use is obviously against prison rules and having people queuing for a needle exchange programme could have ramifications for good order within prisons."

The Guardian has obtained a copy of Prison Service instructions on the scheme issued to governors, including those in private jails. It says the policy aims to combat "the spread of HIV and other blood-borne viruses such as hepatitis, [which] are readily spread when drug users share contaminated injecting equipment".

It points out that "similar arrangements have worked well in Scottish prisons since 1993". The Prison Service says the scheme was approved by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which was asked to design a strategy for the reintroduction of disinfecting tablets at all penal establishments.

The school believes that a pilot scheme at 11 prisons in 1998 and 1999 was successful, and that the scheme should operate in all prisons. The home secretary, David Blunkett, has accepted its advice.

Last night a spokesman for the Department of Health said it was not opposed to the cleansing scheme in prisons. "Whilst it is acknowledged in the community at large that needle exchange programmes are an effective method, there are drawbacks to similar schemes in institutional environments," it said.

But a GP who practises in an area with a high rate of heroin use said: "Disinfectant tablets may prevent the spread of some skin diseases, but are unlikely to combat blood-borne viruses effectively."

The use of heroin and other class A drugs has become a serious issue in prisons. Some argue that the increase in use of such drugs coincided with the introduction of mandatory drug tests in the early 1990s.

Prisoners are aware that opiates such as heroin are only detectable for up to 48 hours after consumption, whereas cannabis, which used to be many prisoners' preferred drug, is detectable for longer.

Comment: Depending on your viewpoint this approach by the prison service is either a continuation of their 'head in the sand' approach or the start of a long process of change. And while cleaning tablets are clearly better than nothing, they are not an adequate response they still leave prison at risk. The Prison Service (and presumably the Home Office) needs to acknowledge that substance use, including the use of injected drugs is still a substantial issue and has a duty of care to make harm reduction measures available.

Drug testing in Schools - Further coverage

The coverage of drugs testing in schools rumbles on: archived news stories on this subject are located HERE and the subject is discussed in more detail in the DRUG NEWS section of the site.

Schools 'need consent' for drug tests
BBC
24.3.04
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3514931.stm

Schools have been told not to carry out searches in pupils' lockers or clothes without consent, under new drug prevention guidelines. And pupils whose parents have not agreed to sniffer dog checks should be allowed to leave during searches. Such searches should not be used solely for deterrent impact, head teachers in England have been told. If there are no reasonable grounds for suspicion, heads are told they could be challenged under the Human Rights Act.

The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, caused a stir when he talked in an interview with the News of the World newspaper about guidance to be issued to head teachers next month on how to tackle pupils they suspect of drug taking. "If heads believe they have a problem in their school then they should be able to do random drug testing," he said. "Guidance will be given to head teachers next month which is going to give them specifically the power to do random drug testing within their schools."

In fact the guidance has been published already. It is on the education department's Teachernet website. A spokesperson explained that it had not yet been "issued" in the sense of being sent out to schools.

The guidance says some schools have "adopted further strategies such as urine-testing or requesting police handlers or private companies with sniffer dogs" to try to detect illegal drugs. There is no mention of "random" tests as such. Instead it stresses that schools should involve the police and get a search warrant before conducting a dog search.

They are advised to make sure, in advance, that parents have given their consent, usually in writing - and that children for whom consent has not been given are removed. A spokesperson for the Department for Education explained that, provided tests had been agreed in advance in the school's overall drug policy, they could then be random.

"Schools must not search personal property without consent," the guidance says. "If the school wishes to search personal property, including pupils' property stored within school property, for example a bag or pencil case within a locker, they should ask for consent." Where consent is refused they will need to consider notifying parents "who may persuade their child to give consent or if they wish to proceed along formal lines calling the police" [sic].

Staff are warned it is "not appropriate" for them to carry out a personal search, including searching clothing and inside pockets. "Every effort should be made to persuade the person to hand over voluntarily any drugs, in the presence of a second adult witness." "Where the individual refuses and the drug is believed to be illegal, and the school wishes to proceed along formal lines, then the police must be called."

The guidance says it is essential that before a school does a dog search, it should consider very carefully whether the action:

• is consistent with the pastoral responsibility of the school to create a supportive environment
• is culturally insensitive - "for example, dogs are considered unclean in Muslim and Buddhist cultures"
• will lead to labelling and be damaging to pupils concerned
• will result in appropriate support for pupils most in need
• is feasible and an effective use of school resources, and those of the police, where involved.
  

"The above considerations apply equally to drug testing," the guidance adds.
Searches to detect drugs should be a clear part of an overall drug policy developed "in consultation with pupils, parents, staff, governors and the whole school community".

And parents should "have given their consent (usually in writing) to the proposed use of sniffer dogs at the request of the head teacher". It says this is "good practice rather than a legal requirement". Schools should see that "procedures are in place to remove pupils for whom consent is not given".

Children's rights campaigners and even a former chief constable have questioned the viability and legality of carrying out drug searches. The second biggest teachers' union has called for consultation before the guidance is issued.

We cheated drug testers

Merope Mills
Wednesday February 25, 2004
The Guardian

Of all the goods currently available for sale in the modern playground - stolen trainers, alcohol, mobile phones - Tony Blair's plans to introduce drug-testing in schools may well throw up another less palatable black-market product. "Clean" urine, free from impurities likely to show up in a drug analysis, looks set to be a highly sellable commodity for enterprising students in future years.
The prime minister announced this weekend that he wants to follow the example set by America in deterring drug use among young people through urine tests. The Bush administration is pointing to an 11% fall in drug use among students of 15 and upwards in the past two years. So we now have Blair standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Bush in the war against child drug abuse.

But Britain is not a complete stranger to the drug-testing of children. At the sixth-form college I attended, random drug-testing has been in place for years - the headteacher felt very strongly about the issue. Being found out would automatically result in expulsion, even though it was an otherwise liberal school: it provided smoking areas, and pupils could address teachers by their first names. There, several hundred 16- to 18-year-olds swore blind they never touched the bad stuff - and, as in the American schools, both pupils and teachers happily pointed to their exam results to prove it.

So I, and other ex-pupils of the school, could tell Mr Blair a few home truths about how we cheated the system. Because the reality remains that kids who want to take drugs will dedicate hours to finding and developing a way to make sure they can - and the threat of drugs tests is unlikely to stop them.

In the early years of the tests being introduced at my school, a (pretty unpleasant) urine sample racket sprung up. This involved the "clean" students either giving or selling - depending on the relevant levels of friendship and poverty - a sample of their own urine to the drug-takers, who would then transfer it to the sample tube in the toilet cubicle or when the teacher's back was turned.

This system worked for a while, but eventually the teachers caught on and enforced a new regime: from then on, all samples had to be passed while the teacher was watching - as if adolescence isn't bad enough, without this royally embarrassing addition.

So the pupils had to seek new ways to get around the tests. And the solution that they settled on is the principle reason why drug-testing schoolchildren is a seriously misconceived idea: they decided to take stronger drugs.

The briefest of internet searches will tell any interested teenager which drugs stay in your system longest, and are therefore most likely to show up in a urine test. So cannabis - which would have been most pupils' relatively harm-free drug of choice - was off the menu for us because it could stay in your system for up to three weeks. But class A drugs like LSD and ecstasy had a more transient effect. Pop one on Friday and - hey presto! - you're clean by Monday. Cocaine, crack and heroin are even less likely to be detected, passing through the system in as little as one or two days (depending, of course, on the quantity taken).

One of the success stories cited by the Americans involves students in rural Autauga County in Alabama, where drug tests showed an 18% drop in marijuana use in 2002. Sounds impressive - but there is little to prove that the students haven't just switched their habit to something harder.

Anecdotally, this same effect has been seen in prisons, where drug tests have been enforced for years and heroin-use, though at alarmingly high levels, passes through the system undetected or ignored.

There also remains a serious question of just how random these drug tests turn out to be. Leaving it up to the headteachers - as Blair proposes - means that picking on "difficult" students is practically inevitable. At my school, certain pupils (most notably those with poor grades who were in danger of bringing down the school's league-table position) found themselves "randomly" picked to take the test five or six times. Straight-A students, meanwhile, would breeze through two years of education without ever getting the dreaded call-up.

Many teachers have made it clear that they have no desire to take up the burden of responsibility where police and social workers fail. Likewise, children have enough pressures on them without feeling persecuted by their school heads and pushed into higher-class drugs by inherently flawed tests. Mr Blair may like to take some lessons in life before he goes proudly declaring his solution to drug use in the young. His suggestion is likely to make matters worse.

Leading article: Blair is guilty of drugs spin
26 February 2004
The Independent

Downing Street's desperation for home news stories to divert attention from the messy aftermath of the Iraq war is threatening to wreck the consensus about how to deal with drug use by school pupils.

In an interview with the News of the World, Tony Blair talked about guidelines to be published next month that will give headteachers new powers to carry out random drug tests on their pupils. In answer to questions from journalists, Downing Street aides were quoted as saying that sniffer dogs would be employed to track down the offenders.

While it is true that there will be new guidance for schools next month, it is not true there will be new powers for headteachers to carry out random tests. The power for heads to do this exists already - and is used widely by private schools and a handful of state secondaries. All that next month's advice will do is spell out how headteachers can carry out random drugs tests. They must get the consent of parents beforehand - either individually or through home-school contracts.

The advice, which stems from months of consultation between teachers' leaders, drugs charities and civil servants from the Department for Education and Skills, will be as far from the aggressive document conjured up in the Prime Minister's interview as can be imagined. It will talk of counselling for pupils found in possession of drugs that will to allow them to stay in school if a head is reluctant to expel.

Random tests can play their part in combatting drug abuse, particularly if they are used in the sensitive way that they have been at the independent schools where they have been introduced. In the private sector, random tests are only used on those pupils caught in possession of drugs but not thought to be habitual abusers. A condition of these pupils being allowed to remain in school is that they agree to undergo random tests to ensure they do not reoffend.

The policy is apparently successful, and is considered by heads to be a preferable alternative to the "one strike and you're out" tactic. Next month's guidance is unlikely to lead to a rush of schools introducing random drugs tests. Let us hope it leads to a little more understanding of the nature of the problem and the different ways of tackling it. That, of course, is an altogether more sympathetic approach to that portrayed by the Prime Minister, and could even work.

Heroin sums, Beatles songs and cocaine geography to teach risks

February 28, 2004

Drugs message to be taught in every lesson

PUPILS could be calculating the street price of heroin in maths classes, under a new approach to drugs education.
The guidelines have been embraced by head teachers but have outraged parents and MPs. The plan is to remove drugs education from the “ghetto” of health lessons and extend it across the curriculum in imaginative ways.

Maths classes could include calculating how many kilos of poppies would be needed to manufacture a gram of heroin; geographers could explore the drugs trade of Colombia; and drugs could be raised in religious education lessons which examine “morals, values and cultural diversity”. Music lessons could examine the subtext of the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

The proposals, announced a month after the Government downgraded cannabis from a Class B to a Class C drug, are included in a booklet from the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) which will be sent to schools next month. English, drama, physical education, science and computer technology lessons would also incorporate the issue.

Ministers emphasised yesterday that the aim was to widen appreciation of the danger of drugs, but opponents argued that by turning drugs into a subject to be studied alongside the periodic table or geography field trips, pupils would be more tempted to experiment.

The booklet says that the cross-curriculum approach “should be explicitly planned as part of a cohesive and progressive programme. Both teachers and pupils should understand the connections between the different aspects of the programme.”

The advice follows a week of controversy over the issue. Tony Blair sowed confusion among head teachers and his own officials when he told a Sunday newspaper that the guidance would empower heads to carry out random drugs tests. In fact, the booklet only notes that some schools are already deploying drug testing and sniffer dogs, and urges others to exercise “extreme caution” before doing likewise.

Within 24 hours of Mr Blair’s comments, the DfES had admitted that head teachers had no powers to compel pupils to provide urine or blood samples. Teachers’ leaders said that he had spoken off the top of his head: random testing had not featured in discussions with ministers because it was simply unworkable.

Tim Yeo, the Shadow Health and Education Secretary, said that the proposal to drag drugs into a wide range of subects risked removing a necessary taboo.

“I think that the discussion of drugs in maths is ridiculous,” he said. “There is no justification for that. There is the danger that widening the study of them will simply stimulate curiosity and make people more tempted to experiment.”

Margaret Morrissey, of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said she was concerned that pupils would become overfamiliar with the issue.

“Parents agree to drugs education in schools as long as it is kept within the realm of personal and social education,” she said. “The danger of this approach is that it could turn the issue into an everyday matter for pupils. Just for once, they could consult parents.”

Officials drafting the booklet express concern about the impact of teachers’ advice on children whose parents are drug abusers. The guidance states that schools “should be sensitive to the very real possibility that the parents/carers or relatives of some pupils may be problem drug users”. It says that “care should be taken . . . so that drug education does not heighten pupils’ anxieties about their family member’s welfare”.

Heads are warned that pupils from cultural minorities might also react badly: “Teachers need to be sensitive to the fact that pupils may have varying attitudes towards drugs which are influenced by their cultural and religious backgrounds and their life experiences, values and beliefs.

“The stigma attached to drug misuse within the South Asian, Chinese, Roma Gypsies and traveller communities is particularly acute, and parents may have concerns about their children discussing such matters or bringing drug education materials into the home.”

Teachers are urged to emphasise that cannabis remains illegal and damaging to health, despite its downgrading.

A spokeswoman for Drugscope, an information and policy centre, said that a “whole school” approach would help to prevent children from falling into drug addiction. “Lack of information is one of the main reasons why pupils experiment with drugs,” she said. “If they are given clear information, enabling them to make informed decisions, they will delay the age of experimentation and are less likely to become users.”

John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, supported a broad drugs education. “If a teacher is doing a lesson on the geography of South America then he should bring up the subject of the drugs trade,” he said.

Blair can't resist a cheap fix
February 25, 2004
Times Online

If only random testing could drive the opiate of pandering to tabloid prejudices out of the Prime Minister's bloodstream

WANT A GUARANTEED way to turn our children into binge-drinkers, heroin addicts and coke fiends? Easy. Just introduce random drug testing into schools. As with so many of Tony Blair’s “eye-catching initiatives”, this latest one is half-witted, ill thought-out and likely to lead to exactly the opposite of what he intends.
I had hoped that the Prime Minister had managed to kick the habit of pandering to the prejudices of whichever tabloid he graced with his next interview. I was sadly deluded. Addictions like that are not easily conquered, and it seems that Blair lacks both the discipline and the determination to quit. When a fix is offered, he cannot resist. If only random testing could drive that opiate out of his bloodstream.

But no. Focus groups have told him that voters believe (as they always have) that young people are out of control. Something must be done. So the Prime Minister casts around for a solution that costs the Government no money but sounds as if he is “cracking down”. Had he bothered to ask the experts first, he would have discovered what a crackpot, wasteful and intrusive “solution” this is.

The critical fact that Blair has overlooked is that cannabis, because it stays in the body’s fat deposits, can remain in the bloodstream for a month or more, while heroin is gone within two to three days, cocaine in a day, and Ecstasy and alcohol in a matter of hours.

So if you are a teenager worried about having drugs detected in your blood, what will you opt for on a Friday night? Surely heroin, coke, E or alcohol rather than the less damaging cannabis.

We already have problems enough with young people and drink. Increasing numbers of them have taken up binge drinking, with the result that town centres have become violent and scary at night. What is more, cases of cirrhosis of the liver are emerging ever earlier. Deaths from liver disease have risen eightfold in men aged 35 to 44 and sevenfold among women over the past 30 years. Do we really want to encourage more of this?

Cannabis isn’t harmless — which drug is? — but it is indisputably less dangerous than heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy or even alcohol in large quantities. Given that teenagers are hardwired to take risks, it is surely better that they smoke the odd spliff at a weekend than inject themselves with smack or experiment with crack.