Book Review: Drug Trying and Drug Use Across Adolescence, Doing Justice to Treatment, Risks and Responses, NE Choices, Taking the Message Home, Doing it for Themselves
| Published date | 01 April 2002 |
| Author | David Smith |
| DOI | 10.1177/147322540200200108 |
| Date | 01 April 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews
If you would like to be added to the Book Reviewers Panel please contact Denis Jones,
Book Reviews Editor. All reviewers can retain the copy of the book reviewed.
Judith Aldridge, Howard Parker and Fiona Measham, Drug Trying and Drug Use
Across Adolescence, London, Home Office, 1999, 1 84082 336 4; Mark Edmunds,
Mike Hough, Paul J. Turnbull and Tiggey May, Doing Justice to Treatment,
London, Home Office, 1999, 1 84082 337 2; Tim Newburn and Joe Elliott, Risks
and Responses, London, Home Office, 1999, 1 84082 381 X; Martine Stead, Anne
Marie MacKintosh, Douglas Eadie and Gerard Hastings, NE Choices, London,
Home Office, 2000, 1 84082 514 6; Richard Velleman, Willm Mistral and Lora
Sanderling, Taking the Message Home, London, Home Office, 2000, 1 84082 515
4; Michael Shiner, Doing it for Themselves, London, Home Office, 2000, 1 84082
513 8.
Reviewed by: Professor David Smith, Department of Applied Social Science,
Lancaster University
These titles, available free from the Home Office, are the first six reports from the Drugs
Prevention Advisory Service, the successor, since April 1999, to the Home Office Drugs
Prevention Initiative. The first reports the findings of a longitudinal study of drug taking by
young people in the north of England, and provides baseline and background data to the other
five reports, which are all evaluations -some preliminary –of a range of projects and schemes
designed to reduce harmful drug use by young people. The projects covered are arrest referral
schemes and a prison-based programme (Edmunds et al.), schemes intended to integrate drugs
prevention work with youth justice teams (Newburn and Elliott), a multi-modal educational
programme in the North East of England (NE Choices:any choices?) aimed at preventing
drug use by adolescents (Stead et al.), five schemes that aimed to engage parents in drugs
prevention (Velleman et al.), and a range of peer education programmes (Shiner). The reports
vary in readability and the balance they strike between the presentation of empirical data and
more analytical discussion of the policy implications of findings, but all will be directly useful
to practitioners in drugs prevention, and all contain material that youth justice practitioners
could use to inform their practice.
There is too much, and too diverse, material in these reports to summarise in a short review,
but the following themes are worth highlighting. The distinction between trying and continued
use emphasised by Aldridge et al. seems crucial, and although obvious on a moment’sreflection
is perhaps liable to be forgotten by, for example, anxious parents or teachers. Many drug users
have never used or had access to treatment resources even when quite advanced in their
drug-using careers, and welcome the opportunity when they are given it, as through an arrest
referral scheme. Problems of implementation, often associated with inter-professional and
inter-agency co-operation, remain common, and basic messages about how to make
inter-agency co-operation effective, available for at least ten years, still often go unheeded in
practice. In programmes for young people, parental involvement is likely to be important, and
can be experienced by parents as informative and helpfully empowering, but those least likely
to participate include those who could potentially benefit most. Of the range of intervention
methods described and discussed in these reports, peer education is probably the most radical
and likely to be the least familiar to many readers; it is encouraging that Shiner’s conclusions
about its potential are generally so positive, and he provides a useful bibliography and
To continue reading
Request your trial