DRUG BOOKLET RIGHT - CHIEF

But Another Drug Body Member Says It Has Wrong Message

CANBERRA - THE Federal Government's chief drugs adviser, Salvation
Army Major Brian Watters, yesterday defended changes made to toughen
up the anti-drugs message in a booklet for parents.

Substantial changes reportedly have been made to the booklet, shifting
its approach from educational to authoritarian.

The booklet will be mailed to one million households this month in
conjunction with television and newspaper adverisements.

Prime Minister John Howard's office told ABC radio that because the
Government took final responsibility for the campaign it was normal
practice for officials to make comments and changes.

Major Watters, the National Council on Drugs chairman, said the
booklet had been through several drafts, including ditching overly
detailed statistics.

"The booklet hasn't been rewritten," he told ABC radio. "The drafts
have been amended to respond to what the committee felt were the
weaknesses and what the research showed.

"When families want a booklet to advise them how to respond to the
drug menace in their community and how it might affect their kids,
they don't want to wade through pages of statistics.

"Let's keep it simple and straightforward and to the
point.

"There's been no change or radical difference to what was originally
proposed, that this thing should be a booklet focusing on families and
encouraging them to do those things that are believed to be
preventive."

But another member of the National Council on Drugs reference group,
Tony Trimingham, was concerned about the changes.

"If we want to be credible with teenagers and young people using
drugs, we have to listen to them, we have to accept that their world's
a different one from the one that we grew up in," he told ABC radio.
Mr Trimingham said there was no evidence that two-way communication
between parents and children was being encouraged.

"For instance, this one sentence that I was told about says you tell
your teenagers that they've made bad decisions if they're using
drugs," he said. "I would rather have an approach which questions why
they made the decision, (how) they benefited by that decision and what
they think of the fact that they're now using drugs.

"That is more open-ended and is going to lead to more beneficial
communication where the patent's going to seem to be credible."

Mr Trimingham told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper the booklet now
covered only illegal drugs, not cigarettes or alcohol.