RECREATIONAL DRUG USE `BECOMING NORMAL'

The number of young people in Britain experimenting with drugs is growing
and that country is now moving towards "the normalisation of recreational
drug use," Prof Howard Parker of the University of Manchester told the
seminar.

A 1995 survey found that close to half of all 16yearolds had tried an
illegal drug. Studies are also showing that drug experimentation is
happening earlier, with 11 to 13yearolds now trying drugs more often than
before.

Preventive drugs education does not seem to be working, said Prof Parker,
who is the director of social policy for the Management of Social Problems
unit at his university.

"Unless policymakers, and in particular politicians, begin to grasp the
enormity of the shift in attitudes and behaviour amongst young people in
respect of recreational drug use, we will continue to flounder around
throwing tens of millions of pounds at ineffective drugs education."

Current British policy involved the criminalisation of large numbers of
otherwise lawabiding citizens and widened the gulf between those over and
under 30 years of age, he said. Government should stop being obsessed with
adolescent drug triers and start planning for the minority who would have
problems as drug users and would move into adulthood with worrying drug
careers.

Young people who wanted to get drugs could easily do so from friends of
friends, not from pushers. "A young person who does not want to have
anything to do with drugs thus has to say No not once but dozens of times
during their adolescence".

Most young drugtakers pay for their drugs from pocketmoney or parttime
earnings. Young drugusers in England are now as likely to be female as
male. By late adolescence class differences are minimal. "Indeed, higher
education students have enormous drugs appetites," Prof Parker said.

Drugs are being used wherever young people congregate. Young people who
have decided never to experiment with drugs still must get used to the
presence of drugs at social gatherings.

Prof Parker criticised British government policy that argued that youthful
drugtaking led to crimes over and above drug possession or supply.

"If half of a sixth form in a successful traditional grammar school have
tried cannabis and around half of all British university students have done
drugs, then we have a major problem upholding the law." The moral authority
of the law was being undermined, he said.

Drug education strategies were being driven by political expedience. "I
suspect the real debate will only occur when the situation gets so out of
hand that the pressure for a rational debate finally gets politicians to
change," Prof Parker said.

"Cannabis dominates young people's drug use and it is with this drug's use
that we need to grapple. I personally would want to see a drugs cautioning
system for personal use which basically decriminalised possession." No
other drugs should be considered in the same way.

Prof Parker said the "war on drugs" approach failed to distinguish between
drugs. By failing to distinguish between cannabis and heroin, society was
failing to protect early adolescents from a "return of heroin".

The situation in Ireland did not seem as serious or as developed as that in
Britain. However, given the heroin problem in Dublin and the developing
dance drug and recreational drug scene, there was a danger of the
overlapping and blurring of the different arenas.