THE DRUGS DO WORK AND SO DOES THE DRINK

Two reports putting Irish schoolchildren at the top of the drink and drugs
league are worrying parents and politicians, but are no surprise to
professionals working with young people, writes Nuala Haughey

Thousands of 16yearold students will be singing along in their bedrooms
and in bars this weekend to a song called The Drugs Don't Work by the
bestselling British band, The Verve. While mouthing the lyrics of this
song (which is not an antidrugs anthem) these teenagers will be drinking
more, smoking more and taking more illegal drugs than the typical European
student.

Two major European surveys produced this week show that for Irish students
drugs, both legal and illegal, clearly are working.

More worrying perhaps is the evidence that warnings from the Government
about the health effects of alcohol, cigarettes and illegal drugs, as well
as efforts to restrict teenagers' access to them, are not working.

The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD)
revealed that Irish 16yearold students are top of the class of 26
European countries in terms of binge drinking.

They rank second, after students in the UK, when it comes to taking
cannabis or any other illegal drugs and second, after their counterparts in
the Faroe Islands, when it comes to smoking.

The report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction
(EMCDDA) in Portugal shows Ireland has the youngest drugs addicts in
Europe, with an average age of 23.

The Minister for Health and Children, Mr Cowen, and the Minister of State
with responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy Team, Mr Chris Flood,
will take part in debates on many of these findings in the Dail next
Wednesday and Thursday.

While the statistics may worry parents and agitate the Opposition, they
come as little surprise to professionals working with young people, said Mr
Eamonn Waters from the National Youth Council of Ireland. "We have reached
a crisis stage. The thing that amazes me most is that people are surprised
by these figures because anybody who is working on the ground has seen this
coming for years," he said.

"If these figures related to any other area, like diseases or car
accidents, there would be a national outcry, but in this case there seems
to be a lot of complacency . . . Legal drugs seem not be taken as
seriously, but the problem is getting worse and worse."

The ESPAD report shows that the problem with both legal and illegal drugs
is on both the supply and demand sides. The vast majority of students said
they considered it easy to get beer, wine, spirits or inhalants if they
wanted them. Twothirds said it was easy to get cannabis and half said it
was easy to get ecstasy.

"What's remarkable is that Irish kids see almost everything as easy to get
if they want to get it," said Dr Mark Morgan, a psychologist from St
Patrick's College in Dublin who carried out the ESPAD research among 1,900
16yearold students in 80 schools in 1995.

"What that means is that whatever measures are in place at the moment to
prevent them from having access, certainly they don't see them as effective."

The report also shows that warnings about the health risks of alcohol,
tobacco and illegal drugs are simply not getting across to students, 41 per
cent of whom smoke regularly. Two in five students said smoking one or more
packs of cigarettes a day was not a great risk.

Just under half the students said they did not think taking marijuana
regularly was a great risk and about half said they did not see occasional
use of ecstasy, cocaine or inhalants as a great risk either. More than 80
per cent of the students said they did not believe taking five drinks or
more once or twice each weekend was a great risk.

"These figures show a striking dissonance in that the young people would
appear to have such disregard for their own health, yet they are concerned
about environmental issues such as saving the whale or the rain forests,"
said Ms Marie Murray, principal clinical psychologist in St Joseph's
Adolescent Service and coauthor of The Teenage Years, a guide book for
parents of teenagers.

"Is that due to some feeling of doom and gloom about the future or simply
arrogance? I don't have the answer, but I think it is a question that needs
to be asked and that we have to try to answer.

"It could be that at a time of great uncertainty when there isn't a
specific value system to attach themselves to or a specific behavioural
code, there is a strong sense among young people of being rudderless, of
them not being able to envisage a future for themselves."

When it comes to illegal drugs, the ESPAD report debunks the myth that
there are shadowy figures hovering around school playgrounds or underage
discos pushing drugs on our teenagers. Only 2 per cent of students who had
taken illegal drugs said they had been introduced to them by strangers,
according to the ESPAD survey. Almost two in five had received their first
drugs from siblings, friends or in a group.

"The idea that some people have that there are pushers hanging round
schools who give kids drugs and then hope they'll get them hooked and so on
isn't the case," said Dr Morgan, who is also one of the ESPAD report's six
authors.

"It's very significant that the actual link isn't directly between the
suppliers and the kids. It's other kids who are supplying them. For
policymakers, this shows clearly that prevention starts with friends and
that you can't blame the supply of drugs for the drug problem."

Ash Ireland said the statistics showed that healthpromotion messages were
not having an impact on Irish students, two in five of whom smoke
regularly. Democratic Left's health spokeswoman, Ms Liz McManus, said a
comprehensive programme was needed to prevent drug abuse and educate young
people about the dangers of alcohol misuse.

A spokeswoman for Mr Cowen said he was concerned about the drugs situation
and was working closely with his Government colleagues to address it.
Significant progress had been made on implementing recommendations in the
two reports from the ministerial task force on measures to reduce the
demand for drugs, she said.

Mr Waters said the Government was not putting enough money into education
programmes in both schools and nonformal arenas such as youth
organisations. Comprehensive peer education was also crucial.

He called on the Government to immediately honour its commitment made last
May for £20 million towards a youth service development fund to reduce the
demand for drugs. A spokesman for Mr Flood said no agreement had been
reached in the Cabinet on when and how to administer this funding.

"It's a question of refocusing priorities and not just looking at the
judicial or legal end, but at the whole education system and demand
reduction," said Mr Waters.

"You can introduce ID cards, you can lock up pushers, you can tackle more
rogue publicans, but if there is still a demand, people will still supply
it."