Teenagers trying out soft drugs isn't so bad for them - or for us
From The Sunday Times
July 20, 2008
India Knight
Apart from the fact that it is completely illegal and that I don't in any
sense recommend or condone it, I don't actually think there is anything
especially heinous about teenagers experimenting with the softer drugs.
I'd
prefer them to be tucked up in bed familiarising themselves with Kant or
Spinoza, or going for 10-mile runs, but we do need to keep a degree of
realism about these things. The reality is that for the majority of young
people the odd period of light recreational drug use does little harm. I'm
not talking about crack or heroin - but then most children don't
experiment
with crack or heroin.
A quarter of England's secondary school pupils have taken illegal drugs at
least once, according to figures released last week by the NHS Information
Centre. This is a 4% fall since the previous set of figures in 2001 - but
it
still means that more than 40% of the nation's 15-year-olds are likely to
have tried drugs; 6% of 11-year-olds had taken drugs in the past year and
3%
in the past month.
Obviously I am firmly of the opinion that 11-year-olds should be playing
with their dollies, not taking illicit substances (does anyone play with
dolls past the age of five any more? I was devoted to mine until I was
about
12). But I don't find the figures for teenagers especially alarming. I
know
we're all supposed to tremble in our boots at the evil of recreational
drug-taking but experimenting with drugs just seems to me normal - banal,
really.
Teenage binge-drinking is another story, because soft drugs don't cause
you
to get cirrhosis when you're still in your early twenties, or render you
so
out of it that you get raped, or leave the streets of Britain awash with
vomit (although the figures for alcohol have dropped slightly since 2001 -
teenagers are drinking marginally less, which is cheering, although they
are
averaging 12.7 units a week, which isn't).
Rest at :
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/india_knight/article4363992.ece
(after short piece on postcards)
Slatts
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