EARLY DRUG LESSONS MAKE CHILDREN STREET-SMART: EXPERT

"Cheryl was walking down the street when she found a bag of drugs. Draw
and/or write what was in the bag, who dropped it and what you would do with
it. When can drugs be good for you? When can drugs be bad for you?"

This is an exercise given to primary school children in Britain to assess
their level of drug knowledge - which, as it turns out, is extensive. By
age eight, the children are drawing mounds of what they label "crushed
canabes", oval "ecstasi" pills and tabs of acid with faces on the front.

Some children say they would take the bag of drugs to police or their
mothers. But others, like one seven-year-old, would "take the drug, sniff
the glue and huff the merowarna" or, like an eight-year-old, "do a deal
with a friend".

The head of education and prevention in the United Kingdom Government's
standing conference on drug abuse, Ms Ruth Joyce, uses the results of the
exercise as an illustration of the need to start drug education in early
primary school.

In the UK, they start teaching five-year-olds about drugs as medicines and
move progressively through alcohol, tobacco, solvents and other drugs until
students reach the age of 16, she told the first International Conference
on Drugs and Young People in Melbourne yesterday.

Shock-horror drug education prompted increased drug use, she said,
explaining the UK's life skills-based approach, which teaches how to deal
with failure, communication, first aid and decision-making. It also aims to
promote self-esteem.

She urged the community not to discard drug education because past efforts
had failed: "Nobody says if a chlld has a nutrition education lesson but
still continues to stuff their faces with things like McDonald's... that we
chuck nutrition education out."

After delivering her paper, she told reporters she would be amazed if
Australian schoolchildren were less knowledgeable about drugs than their UK
counterparts, saying such knowledge came from television and local sources.

A spokesman for the Department of Education said schools were provided with
significant support and resources for drug-related welfare issues.

Checked-by: Joel W. Johnson