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Got a Teenager? i-nteract

Parentline Plus have added to their Got A Teenager website with two new quizes aimed at parents. The first focuses on risky behaviours like drinking and drug use. They say: Do you feel worried and anxious about your teenager's safety? The vast majority of teenagers make it safely through to adult life, but it's natural for parents to worry! Take this quiz to find out how much you know about common teenage issues such as drugs, alcohol and sex. The second looks at communication.

Teens are Stupid

As you'll see from the video this Irish campaign attempts to use the learning from projects like the Florida anti-tobacco example we looked at here. You can see more of the Irish campaign here.

Research in Brief

Teens and alcohol study: After a few drinks, parenting style kicks in EurekAlert! has a write-up of research into young people and heavy drinking. The researchers interviewed 5,000 young people about their drinking and their relationship with their parents. They found: The teens least prone to heavy drinking had parents who scored high on both accountability and warmth. So-called "indulgent" parents, those low on accountability and high on warmth, nearly tripled the risk of their teen participating in heavy drinking. "Strict" parents – high on accountability and low on warmth – more than doubled their teen's risk of heavy drinking. Abstract here. School-Level Substance Use: Effects on Early Adolescents' Alcohol, Tobacco, and Marijuana Use A paper looking at whether school...

Anne Milton on Alcohol Policy

Anne Milton has today spoken about the government's approach to alcohol policy. She says: The environment in which alcohol is sold and consumed must encourage better decision making, not risk taking. Reviews on alcohol taxation and pricing will report in the autumn - and I know many of you from industry will be working with us on a Responsibility Deal. But it does mean we need to look again at how we can equip people with the right skills to make the right decisions at the right time. So that we can reduce the human cost of alcohol abuse, and the cost to the NHS, too. If we take young people at school, how we give them the skills to make decisions about the huge range of difficult choices they come up against. How when they are revelling in their immortality between the age of 14-24 we get them to behave responsibly. To do...

The Real Deal

My thanks to David for brining my attention to a new resource from the London Drug Policy Forum. These are playing cards aimed at 13 and 14 year olds. Each card has a factual piece of information about drugs along with other issues that interconnect with teenage life. Copies of the cards are available through the LDPF web pages.

ACMD on naphthylpyrovalerone analogues and related compounds (NRG-1)

The ACMD have been looking at a novel compound, naphyrone, which is more commonly marketed as NRG-1, but as they say: The branded product NRG-1 cannot be presumed to be naphyrone. Indeed test purchasing carried out on behalf of the ACMD suggested that NRG-1 was often not naphyrone. Their report suggests that, chemically, it has many similarities to mephedrone,and in terms of risks they go on to say: There is limited published information on the pharmacology of naphyrone. However, there is considerable pharmacological risk potential in this compound due to its potency, relative to other drugs e.g. mephedrone. Later in their paper they suggest that harms may include: adverse effects on the heart and blood vessels, hyperthermia, dependence liability, and psychiatric effects including psychosis and anxiety. In extreme cases...

What have you got in your pockets?

As the media have reported the government are intending to build on the steps taken by the previous government to extend the rights of teachers to search their pupils. The DfE press release says: Currently headteachers and authorised school staff only have the statutory power to search without consent anyone who is suspected of carrying a knife or other weapon. Alcohol, controlled drugs, and stolen property will be added from 1 September 2010. Under the changes announced today we plan to extend the list this autumn to include: personal electronic devices such as mobile phones, MP3 players and cameras legal highs pornography cigarettes fireworks. We will introduce further legislation to allow teachers to search for any item which could cause disorder or pose a threat to safety. Until further guidance is...

Andrew Lansley talks about Drug Education

In one of his first major speeches about public health since becoming Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley has talked about the ambitions the government have for drug education. He says: For too long our approach to public health has been fragmented, overly complex and sadly ineffective. We want to free the system up – to create a framework which empowers people to make the changes that will really make a difference to the nation’s lives. Working with communities and schools to develop young people’s confidence and self-esteem. Seeing diet, exercise and education about drugs, alcohol and smoking not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end, to empower young people to take better decisions when young, so that they enjoy greater health and well-being though life. He goes on to say: We will not be...

Interview with Social Norms Guru Wes Perkins

One of the key figures in the development in social norms approaches to prevention, Wes Perkins, has created a film in which he talks about the approach and how it works. You can download the movie in two different formats, .wmv (which works on PCs) and .mov (which compatible with Quicktime/Apple). If this peaks your interest then there are a number of slides from previous presentations you can download from this page. And separately a new UK blog on the block Social Norms Perspectives may also prove a useful resource.

Tellus Scrapped

The Tellus website has the following message: The Government has decided to stop the delivery of the Tellus Survey as part of its commitment to reduce the burdens which data collection imposes on schools and local authorities. The decision is with immediate effect, which means the Tellus5 survey will not be delivered as planned in the Autumn Term. The Tellus portal will remain live until 17 September 2010 so that schools and local authorities who participated in Tellus4 can access their data using the online analysis tool and save or print a copy of the information that they want to keep beyond this date. I'm guessing that the implication that flows from this is that the Public Service Agreement (PSA 14) National Indicator around drug use (NI 115) has been scrapped too. As a reminder here's what the last Tellus survey was able...

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