If you’re a parent of a secondary school age child, then you probably had a similar drugs education to me. Most of us grew up in the ‘Just Say No’ era, where we were shown shocking pictures of young people dying from using drugs. This was fantastically successful and I never met anyone who used drugs.
Joking aside, the reality was that when I was young, drugs were around, and didn’t seem like such a big deal. I knew lots of people who used cannabis and didn’t immediately turn to heroin, undermining the idea of the gateway drug, and as I got a bit older people around me were using MDMA and Cocaine interchangeably with alcohol and not ending up in hospital. The sterile, shock tactics used in the classroom seemed a world away from the normalisation of drugs in the outside world (don’t even get me started on the glamorization of drugs in music, film & tv).
The problem with the Just Say No approach, is that it shuts down the conversation about drugs
However, as I got older, I did see friends develop more problematic substance use, whether it be the one friend who developed drug induced psychosis leading to suicide, or the large quantity of my friends at university who couldn’t sleep without smoking a joint. If I add in all the problematic alcohol use that I’ve witnessed from the age of 14 up to the present day it becomes clear that saying ‘just don’t do it’ isn’t the solution.
The problem with the Just Say No approach, is that it shuts down the conversation about drugs, essentially denying their existence and influence in young people’s lives and therefore not giving them the tools to keep themselves, and their friends, safe.
Clearly, a different approach was needed. We Are With You has young people’s projects across the country who deliver sessions in schools which use an evidence based approach to teach young people about substances in a pragmatic way. If you want to read more about the evidence check out this website.
This pragmatism involves acknowledging that young people are likely to see drugs in their youth and therefore need to know what those drugs are and what the effects are. This can help them reduce the harm they might experience if they are using, but also enables them to look after their friends.
How do we do this? Well, in all our sessions we look at a variety of drugs, with the focus on those that are most commonly used by young people, we get this information directly from the young people in the session, so if they say they are aware of people using MDMA/Ecstasy we’ll talk about that, but if they think more young people are using Cannabis or Alcohol we’ll focus on those instead.
Then we talk about ways to reduce the risks of that substance - the simplest of which is not to use...
We discuss with the class the expectations people might have for their evening - for example if they want to relax, they might use a depressant (such as alcohol) or if they want to feel energetic they might use a stimulant (such as ecstasy). It’s really important that young people consider this as we have seen a worrying trend of young people taking any pill not knowing what it is and therefore being completely unable to prepare.
Then we talk about ways to reduce the risks of that substance - the simplest of which is not to use and which is typically the number one thing young people suggest when we ask how they might reduce the harm of drug use - but we also give them practical advice. For example for the older age groups we talk about drinking one pint of water per hour with MDMA, not inhaling laughing gas directly from the canister, and starting low (taking a quarter of a pill) with any substance to reduce risk of overdose. With the younger age group we talk about the risk of getting sick if you use too much alcohol or cannabis. With all young people we talk about the value of knowing the recovery position and calling an ambulance if anything goes wrong.
The thread tying all this together in our sessions is young people’s lived experience of the world
We stress the importance of having long breaks between episodes of use and explore the particular risks young people face if they use drugs, for example how cannabis affects the teenage brain, slowing development and reducing IQ and emotional intelligence (if you want to know more about it there’s a great article here)
The thread tying all this together in our sessions is young people’s lived experience of the world. Jodie and I talk to the young people about their lives, ask them to tell us what it’s like and give them the information they need to keep themselves safe. The young people are generally very engaged in the sessions and are often surprised to find that their classmates share their views on the riskiness of drugs - which we support by telling them that statistically less than a quarter of teenagers use drugs, and only 8% using cannabis in the last year*. The feedback we get shows they overwhelmingly feel better able to keep themselves safe after the session - something I never felt after lessons I had about drugs!
*Statistics from NHS digital