Background Information:

Parents and carers
The fact that drugs are a part of life and potentially harmful causes anxiety for parents and carers, who may also feel guilt about their own smoking and alcohol use. Research shows that young people of all ages want their parents to listen to them and understand them more.

Teenagers who get involved in substance misuse tend to have different attitudes to it from those who do not, being more positive and having different perceptions about risk and legal position. Buying and selling drugs among friends is generally not perceived as dealing.

Drugs and their effects
All drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, affect the brain. Different drugs act on different areas, altering the chemical balance responsible for feelings and sensations. It’s not possible to say how any one drug will affect any one person. Drugs may be more harmful to young people because their bodies and brains are still developing. The same drug can have different effects on different individuals, or even a different effect on the same person at a different time.

The purity and strength of a drug can vary a great deal. People build up a tolerance to some drugs and this can pose problems for medical use and, where a drug is being used for other purposes, can result in people taking larger quantities or taking it more frequently to try to get the same effect. A person’s mood, circumstance and surroundings all play a part. Some drugs are more addictive than others and some people are much more likely to become addicted or are made more vulnerable by their drug use.

Alcohol and tobacco
Media coverage and political knee-jerk responses to illicit drug use often help mask the fact that the real dangers to health and well-being for the general population, including young people, and for society, are alcohol and tobacco.