Government policy on young people and drugs 1985 - 1994

by Colin Chapman.

The focus of this paper is an examination of Government strategy on drugs in relation to young people. The Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) has played a key role in influencing policy over this period. In 1984 in a report on drug prevention it concluded there was a need for more effective broadly based programmes aimed at promoting healthier lifestyles, which would include information about drugs and their effects. It highlighted the need to promote help and guidance not only for young people but also for parents, teachers and other professionals including social workers, police and probation officers.

In the same year the Government also established an inter-departmental working group of ministers.This group met regularly during the 1980s and this period at least represented a period of some coherence with co-ordination for education being a central plank in Government strategy. In contrast the 1990s has been marked by poor co-ordination and by 1993 the Depart-ment for Education (DFE) abrogated their responsibility by terminating the long standing grant aid for drug education .

An early feature of Government response after the publication of the 1984 prevention report was the launch of what was described as a "major health education and information campaign to discourage young people from experimenting with heroin".2 Heroin had been selected for attention because about fears of adolescents smoking this drug.

The health education element included a purposeful and co-ordinated preventative action against drug misuse in schools and colleges. The Department for Education and Science, as it was then called, provided 4 million pouns over the next two years to fund the appointment of Drug Education Co-ordinators (DECs) for each local education author (LEA) in England and Wales.3 In the event all 96 LEAS were successful in gaining educational support grants. The LEAs' contribution was 30 per cent with the remaining made up by the grant. In addition a booklet entitled Dr Misuse And The Young was published which gave advice to teachers and youth workers on recognising t symptoms of drug use and how to deal with it. emphasised the need for teachers to be well inform about drugs and for the use of a variety of approaches teaching about the issue. The context was to be personal, social and health education programmes. Tl impetus provided by the co-ordinators attracted a satell industry of curriculum material, one of which, Drugwis became pride of place in the resource hall of fame.

The period of most impact in drug education was between 1986 and 1989 when work with schools and the you service was almost exclusively on drug issues. When ti individual projects were evaluated in 1989 by tE University of Southampton the report concluded: UDEC have achieved recognition both locally and nationally < a major focus to health education and PSE (Person And Social Education)... It is clear that DECs ha\ achieved a high profile and have helped give drt education importance. Nothing also to date has done < much to give emphasis to health education in the scho curriculum."4 The report warned that the DECs had on been post for two to three years. "Given this a lot of tin would be needed for developments to take place in LE} before we could stand back and see the results".5 reminded LEAs and the Government that use of illeg drugs was always going to present problems for socie and long term preventative education was the best wc to prevent it. The report went on to recognise that in < LEAs people were present who had developed the skil to provide training and support on education for a ranS of professional groups. Multi-agency working was one 4 the key features of the co-ordinators work.

Sadly this situation was not to last. Although the grants were continued in 1990, many co-ordinators had been employed on fixed term contracts or secondments. Some returned to schools, others relocated into posts where their new found skills were not appreciated. Meanwhile new appointments were made as the parameters of drug education were widened to include alcohol and smoking, as well as other health issues including HIV/AIDS, which had now become a major public health concern. The issue of illicit drugs had dropped down the agenda, and in fact at the 1991 National Conference for Health Education Co-ordinators drugs did not feature on the main conference agenda. Whilst the intention was that illicit drugs would continue to be part of the remit, new appointees were dropped in at the deep end, without the benefit of expertise and experience that had been built up over the previous four yearsðreinforcing the downgrading of drugs on the health education agenda. The focus now was on sex education and HIV, which of course was an equally important health issue, but it should not have been at the expense of drug education.

Once the funding for all preventative health education was finished in 1993 the writing was on the wall for drugs education. Many LEAs, with budget restrictions of their own, did not have the resources to maintain the funding for the DEC posts. The DFE's policy was to move overall funding away from the LEAs to schools, as part of a wider policy of giving schools more control over their budgets. Health education was now a luxury, and any central support from LEAs seemed to be on the core curriculum subjects like maths, english and science and the statutory requirements of the new national curriculum.

So what chance has the new Government strategy particularly on how it impacts on the education sector to provide the necessary resources to ensure all young people have access to drug education? It is too serious, and all embracing an issue to be left to the vagaries of the market place. But this is how it is envisaged, with drug education funding offered directly to schools, in order they may buy in what they need. The delicate infra-structure which was beginning to take root at a local level was seriously damaged when the funding for LEA co-ordinators ended. Those left in post are in a precarious position, relying in some cases on health authority funding, plundered from HIV/AIDS budgets, and some-times offering only a few months security.

The often patchy local infrastructures can leave serious holes in provision. I know of one school in a quiet rural town where a drug incident created quite a wave in the normally calm waters of the school and community. Teachers sat around wondering who they should turn to for help but there were no obvious contacts or resources. This conjures up a picture of breached defences, rather than a solid and robust network of local agencies waiting to respond.

It has been argued that given the declining function of LEAs it is not appropriate to revitalise the drug co-ordinator role. I am not convinced by this, as there is conclusive evidence this particular approach worked well in allowing co-ordinators to work effectively across agencies and geographical boundaries. Long term developments focusing on prevention and education are built because of the relationships established. Perhaps in some cases it may be appropriate to have someone based in the chief executive's office rather than specifically within education. This does depend on the situation. But in all cases it is important to have one person who has some sense of the local situation, as specified in the new Green Paper6, so the Government's support for initiatives with different agencies working in partnership is translated into practice.

However, it is difficult not be a little cynical about the Green Paper's claim that the Government wishes to build on existing successes, to ensure effective local action throughout England and Wales. Similar official sentiments are expressed in the DFE's curricular, which says athe Secretary of State acknowledges the key role which health education co-ordinators have played in many parts of the country in providing training, resources, information, advice on policy and curriculum and pastoral policy including assistance for drug users".' Given such official recognition of the impact of LEA co-ordinators it is difficult to understand, seeing as local action is the key to the new Government strategy, why something which does work is not used as the basis for promoting the new approach, especially as young people are seen as the target.

The Green Paper underlines the importance of drug education by not removing it from the slimmed down national curriculum. Yet the Government doesn't see it as being its responsibility to supply adequate funding for national co-ordination. The œ32m provided between 1986 and 1993 to support drug and health education seems like a golden bonanza compared with the yet-to-be-announced contribution for the new Grants for Education Support and Training (G EST) category, which is intended to enable at least one teacher to be trained in every school to deliver drug education. This is potentially an unproductive exercise and seems particularly ill-advised if the experience in one London borough is anything to qo by.

Many teachers who were trained the first time around, rather than making some of them fully equip to face a group of knowing teenagers, realized through the training offered that drugs is a sophisticated issue and that it was too much to ask them to tackle this complex subject alone. If we are going to change the culture and make classroom teachers comfortable about the issue we need to have health education specialists trained from the outset through initial teacher training. Not only is the Green Paper silent about teacher training, there seems little prospect of schools getting the help they require, especially in those areas where it is difficult to see who would be able to provide the necessary training. An "emergency approach" has been applied in this borough to take teams of specialist workers from drug agencies to the youth service into schools, to bring the necessary expertise to a flagging health education curriculum. This hardly represents stronger action "in reducing the demand for illegal drugs"8 and it will be interesting to see whether LEAs consider it worthwhile to contribute their share of this training money, especially if there is no person in place to co-ordinate the work. The other element of grant aid available is the support for innovative local projects. This money has to be competed for, a popular formula for the distribution of scarce resources. Again the question has to asked about the long term impact of short term projects.

The most encouraging element in the Government strategy in helping young people to resist drugs is the request that schools develop policies on drug-related incidents. Consistency is the aim of this proposal and the information given in the DFE's draft circular, Drug Prevention for Schools, will help schools "emerge from the bunker" through official backing for a drugs policy. This will hopefully create a more open climate towards drug issues and change the practice of many educational institutions, who in the past have tended to react like cornered animals, striking out at the smallest sign of a drugs incident. Instead of regarding drugs incidents almost exclusively seen as a disciplinary matter, now the recommendation is that "schools will want to develop a repertoire of responses incorporating both sanctions and counselling. Reflecting the different kinds of drug-related offences, such as possession of an illegal drug, individual drug use, and selling or sharing drugs with other pupils".9 Although it will not be mandatory, drugs policies will get the required attention, because the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) will be instructed to inspect the quality and effectiveness of school drugs policies as part of their cycle of school inspections. The numbers of schools which develop drug policies has been registered as a performance indicator for the measurement of the success of this new strategy.

Interestingly alcohol and tobacco is included in the consideration of drug prevention approaches. The DFE's draft circular recognises the role that tobacco has on starting young people off in their drug careers. Whilst smoking and drinking are seen as key elements in any drug education programme, they are oddly excluded from the Green Paper. Perhaps this has something to do with John Major's introductory statement, in which he professes everyone's aim must be to put drug barons out of business and protect our people from the misery and the waste that drugs produce".'ø However, the misery caused by long term health problems from smoking and alcohol use fit neatly into this aim.

In the foreword to the Green Paper, a focused dome strategy is put forward in order "to tackle the roots of problem". Given the inexorable rise in the use of drugs by young people it is surprising there is no analysis of the causes of this situation. It views drug use as a case of social problems and noot as a result of them. It states that poor performance in school and at work are consequences of drug use which produce unquantifiable costs in waste and inefficiently, and also points to family stress and breakdown. The paper doesn't explore at length the pressures that confront young people in terms of fragmented home life, worries about unemployment and the apparent attractiveness with which young people perceive drugs like any other consumer product. They use it because they see some benefit from taking drugs and that it enhances experience and gives them a boost in social situations and offers an escape from the complex pressures of everyday life.

The Green Paper rather naively states that the number of young people experimenting with drugs is still in minority, though a significant one. The figures given in the DFE circular that 14 per cent of 15-year-olds admit to having taken an illegal drug, with up to 10 per cent having used cannabis, seems out of line with research caried out in Manchester." It also contrast with plenty of anecdotal evidence from up and down the country from different agencies which would suggest that 50 per cent was a more accurate fuure. The suggestion in the Green Paper that the raves of the 1980s has led to the development of a youth sub-culture associated with drug use is also misleading. A discernible youth sub-culture emerged gradually after WWII as young people found independence and money. The significant trend in the late 1980s and 1990s has been with the concern about the normalisation of drug use amongst young people. It is not accepted that young people may be involved with drugs in a recreational way and there is a belief that young people experimenting with drugs need some kind of intervention, appropriate support and counselling. This means that potentially half the school population would fall into this category! Drugs are still regarded as an activity which reflects a deviant lifestyle. However there is some indication that the Government is to look at what makes drugs attractive to young people, with a national publicity campaign designed to reduce the attractiveness of drugs to young people. The Department of Health is to talk to the advertising industry about this - it would be better of consulting with young people.

The school is clearly seen in the Green Paper as having a mayor role in combating drug use amongst the young. But there is surprisingly no mention of the youth service which now seems to have dropped out of the reckoning. In 1988 it was seen as being an integral part of the drug prevention strategy with the training of youth workers and the development of resource material for the service.

This absence does represent a major weakness in the present proposal, although it does have to be borne in mind that the youth service has suffered in the same way as other public sector oganisations and has almost diappeared in some areas.

Yet the proper resourcing of outreach work to young people would seem to be crucial particularly those disaffected by school and who's main leisure time is spent on the street or at home, in pubs, or at dance or rave venues. The Green Paper acknowledges "activities which provide recreation and opportunities to develop a variety of skills are also important in helping young people to resist drugs".'3 These seem like empty words when it is seen how the youth service has been decimated over recent years, and how much young peoples' leisure time is in the hands of commercial interests. Any effective national strategy on drugs must include the revitalisation of the youth service to provide a flexible resource for young people.

While the overall impression from Government pronouncements is of vigorous and co-ordinated action, the hard evidence tells another story. There are fewer police officers targeting the supply end, an overstretched treatment and rehabilitation sector to deal with the problems thrown up by adult drug use and cutbacks in the numbers of customs officers deployed to tackle importation of drugs. Most importantly policies aimed at young people, which form the core of the new strategy do not have the necessary national infrastucture through education and the youth service to carry out the identified proposals.

References

(1)(3)(12) Tackling Drug Misuse - A summary of government strategy. Third Editon 1988 The Home Office

(2) The Prevention and Treatment of Drug Misuse In Britain. Central Office of Informaton 1988.

(4)(5) Education and the Misuse of Drugs. A National Evaluation of the Drug Co-ordinators Initiative. A report to LEAs. Turner G.Murphy R. Williams T May 1989.

(6)(8) (10) (13) Tackling Drugs Together. A consultation document on a strategy for England. 1995/98. HMSO October 1994.

(7)(9) Drug Prevention and Schools. Draft circular November 1994 Department for Education.

(11 ) Pick n' Mix. Changing patterns of illicit drug use amongst 1990s adolescents. Parker H. and Measham F. Drugs Education Prevention and Policy Volume 1 Number 1 1994

Colin Chapman has been Drug Education Co-ordinator for Redbridge LEA since 1986.

"COULD DO BETTER"