Current youth drug education has 'little or no impact'

The UKDPC report, A Fresh Approach to Drugs, called for a change in policy in several areas:

• Drugs policy needs to be changed to focus on lowering the risk of harm to users and to others, and the bar should be set particularly high for children and young people.
• Government and society should support individuals to behave responsibly.

• Current programmes aiming to prevent young people from using drugs through education and information generally "have little or no impact" and can even increase drug use.
• Traditional law enforcement efforts often "have limited or no sustained impact on supply" and can have unintended consequences.

• Instead, police action should focus on particularly harmful groups or behaviours, such as using intelligence to identify and prosecute dealers who are particularly violent or who exploit children.