COULD IT BE THAT YOUNG PEOPLE TAKE DRUGS BECAUSE THEY, AH, LIKE THEM?

"It feels great. The best feeling I've ever had in my life. Better than
sex, better than anything. This is the only time I feel warm, safe and in
control."

Peter Wearne has heard it thousands of times, from thousands of kids, since
he started working with young drug users in St Kilda in the 1970s.

While such an attitude is hardly novel in the drug scene, Britons were
outraged when dozens of users told a new BBC television documentary,
Chemical Britannia, that they took cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and even
heroin simply because the drugs made them feel good.

What did it mean for prevention? What if young people were taking drugs not
because they were poor, damaged by family breakdown, mentally ill, abused,
or because they were desperately unhappy? What if they took drugs because
they liked them, it was fun, and they felt they could do it safely?

"Heroin is my drug of choice over alcohol or cocaine," said one user. "I
take it at weekends in small doses, and do the gardening." Said another:
"Ecstasy is one of the nicest things I have ever tried. I know it is a
positive force." And another: "You can form great friendships with someone
you never met before."

The program was attacked as damaging and disturbing by proponents of drug
resistance education while others, such as ecstasy-using presenter Mat
Southwell, said it strengthened the argument for legalisation.

According to Paul Dillon, of Australia's National Drug and Alcohol Research
Centre, the pure enjoyment factor has been proved in countless studies but
is rarely acknowledged in prevention campaigns.

"If you look at (Prime Minister John Howard's anti-drugs) booklet and the
section about the consequences of ecstasy, by the time you had finished
reading it you would think your child is a complete mental case for taking
this substance. There is no acknowledgement of the perceived good effects,"
he said.

"The first question you should ask is, 'Why are you using?' And if they say
it's because they like how it makes them feel - in the same way that you go
for a drink after work, light up a cigarette or have a coffee in the
morning - then you wouldn't necessarily hear alarm bells going off.

"If it's because they're feeling depressed or there's something
fundamentally wrong ... the alarm bells ring and it's a screaming sign of
problematic drug use."

Mr Wearne was also anxious to distinguish between experimental use and the
kind of dependence that leads to serious problems, which is often complex
and linked to trauma, neglect, poverty or a lack of opportunity for people
he encounters with Victoria's Youth Substance Abuse Service.

More than ever, chaotic use of illicit drugs had a social and economic
context that made the search for euphoria more desperate, he said. "Think
about what it gives you - a structure for your day, a place to be, a peer
group, excitement and activity. What the f... are they going to replace
that with? They're not going to walk into a full-time job.

"... I fundamentally believe people who take a drug do so because it has
some positive effect. But sometimes there is a transition to a point where
they are avoiding pain rather than getting pleasure. They're terrified of
what they will feel like when they don't have it."

David Murray, executive director of YSAS, said educating young people about
the "evils" of illicit drugs did not work because images of death and
junkies did not ring true with their own experience.

He knew a group of young men who regularly, socially and, they thought,
safely smoked marijuana until one had a psychotic breakdown and ended up in
an acute psychiatric facility. It may or may not have been linked to
cannabis, but the rest of the group "got a real shock and they dropped it",
Mr Murray said. "Until they had a direct experience they didn't react."

At an international conference in Melbourne last week, UCLA Professor
Rodney Skager admitted that experimenting with drugs was "always a
crapshoot - you cannot predict which way the dice will roll", but insisted
education should be honest.

"(That) means acknowledging up front that ... significant numbers do not
like the experience and avoid further use, while others like it, even
perceive personal benefits, and yet do not progress to dysfunctional use,"
Professor Skager said.

Annabel Boys, a researcher from London's National Addiction Centre who
interviewed young people about why they used alcohol, ecstasy,
amphetamines, LSD, cocaine and heroin, identified about 20 reasons that
were not specific to particular drugs - for example; to relax, to aid
sleep, to have better sex, to have better times with friends, to stay
awake, to dance all night, to increase energy, to relieve boredom and to
forget problems - which had implications for prevention.

But Ms Boys said early research pointed to a link between the "negative
mood functions" and more dangerous, dependent drug use.

How best to prevent this most chaotic and confronting kind of addiction?
"For example, early on in schools, identify children who are in significant
difficulty. That's the time to put energy and resources into those
problems," Mr Murray said. "In secondary school, when young people are
starting to get into truancy, performing badly, getting caught smoking,
often the response is to kick them out. We should do exactly the opposite
... It's not about educating kids about the evils of drugs."