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EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 14 |
Aug/Sept 1998 |
| Thanks
for Helping Me Ryan is typical of the young people we work with. He is caught up in a world of drugs and crime and struggling with his addiction in the community. For the last 8 weeks he has been in our project. We are preparing him for entry into a rehabilitation unit. In our environment he is safe and is able to create an action plan regarding the direction he wants to take with his life. He has stopped with some of our befrienders who play an important role in his development. Ryan thanks Edges readers and the T.H.O.M.A.S organisation for the support it gives him .  |
TACKLING
DRUGS - THE GOVERNMENTS STRATEGY The New Ten-Year Strategy "Tackling Drugs to Build a Better Future" has been published. Keith Hellawell, as the UK Anti-Drugs Co-Ordinator and Mike Trace, his deputy, have been involved in an extensive consultation with drug users, the police, health professionals, volunteer groups, parents, young people, and teachers. The four key aims of the strategy are: young people, communities, treatment and availability. The strategy aims to help young people resist drug misuse in order to achieve their full potential in society. Equally, it wants to protect communities from drug related anti-social and criminal behaviour, it focuses on treatment to enable people with drug problems to overcome them and live healthily and crime free lives and it wants to stifle the availability of illegal drugs on the streets. By concentrating on these areas it hopes that it will reduce the number of young people using drugs, tackle repeat offending by drug related offenders and reduce availability of drugs to children. The Government is aware that drugs are a complex problem. If it is to deliver a new and modern Britain for the 21st Century, the problems of drugs need to be tackled. It is already a burden on the Criminal Justice System and the purse strings of the Health Authorities. At present over a billion pounds is spent each year fighting the complexities of drug dependency. The New Strategy acknowledges for the first time a link between drug misuse and social conditions. It emphasis that spending priorities need to be changed to stop the problem happening rather than reacting to when it does happen. It sees the need for greater co-operation between all those who are working in the field so that all efforts can be focused in the same direction. |
