Pride and Progress

I’ve been lucky to be engaged in a number of activities recently which make me both proud of our work and the people we work with and hopeful that we can make progress in getting more effective drug policy and practice.

At the United Nations earlier this month I took part in the “Beyond 2008″ global NGO conference where we brought together NGOs from all round the worlld, with different experiences and ideologies who agreed to work together to try to influence the United Nations and national governments. We agreed - all by consensus, with no dissension - a Political Declaration and three Resolutions which will now be put forward to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs 2009. The web site of the Vienna NGO Committee on Narcotic Drugs (www.vngoc.org) has now been updated to include much of the material presented at the Vienna Forum. On the Home Page you can find a link to the Final Declaration and Resolutions.

This week Mentor UK hosted a meeting of European NGOs who are working together to find out how we can support kinship carers in UK, Sweden, Lithuania, Romania, Belgium, Spain and Italy to support drug prevention for the children in their care. It was inspirational to work with people from completely different backgrounds and to share our experiences and begin planning pilot projects. As with the United Nations activities, I am optimistic that when we collaborate in this way we can achieve so much more than we can on our own.

Finally, I was really pleased that today’s English Schools Survey and the British Crime Survey are showing progress on drug use among young people. Of course we also know that we can’t be complacent; there remains a minority who by using drugs are doing great harm to themselves, their families and the communities they live in. However, let’s celebrate some progress.According to the English Schools Survey, illegal drug use amongst young people in England has fallen by 4% since 2001 . Other figures from the same report are equally encouraging:

9% of pupils reported taking cannabis within the last year, a proportion which has fallen from 13% in 2001

4% of pupils report having taken one of the eight Class A drugs asked about

only 5% of pupils overall take drugs once a month or more

Separately the British Crime Survey has found that among 16 to 24 year olds there was a decrease in the use of any illicit drug in the last year, from 24.1% to 21.3%.

Drug Use, Smoking and Drinking among young people in England 2007 can be found on the Information Centre’s website: http://www.ic.nhs.uk
Crime in England and Wales 2007/2008 can be found on the Home Office website: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/crimeew0708.html