AET Scotland Newsletter - March 2023 |
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Welcome to our March newsletter! In this edition, you can find out what our Scotland Coordinator Shona has been up to and we welcome a new trustee.
A new research paper looks at reasons for the decline in youth drinking and highlights the availability and rise in acceptability of use of cannabis and its derivatives. We also share some really helpful information on vaping.
Have you booked your place at our conference on the 21st June? If not, you can find more information below; we'd love to see you there!
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Update from Shona - Scotland Coordinator |
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AET are grateful to have been busy in Scotland this Winter and are excited for the start of Spring. We have delivered 16+ Alcohol and Cannabis training to lots of organisations, including Dean and Cauvin Young People’s Trust, Aberdeen Foyer, FARE, Action for Children and Street League.
We had the lovely privilege of attending the DSM Foundation’s Drug Education Showcase Event and hosting a stall at Cleveden Secondary School in Glasgow and are pleased to have taken bookings for Talk About Alcohol training for teachers from this insightful event.
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Aberdeen Foyer youth support staff who participated in cannabis training |
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Street League staff in the Glasgow office having received cannabis training |
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The School Link Officers who received training and resources on alcohol and cannabis from Police Scotland in Edinburgh were another highlight with fantastic discussion and participation from the participants.
Shona is always on hand to provide wonderful resources and training for those supporting 11 – 25 year olds in schools or youth settings and you can email her at shona@alcoholeducationtrust.org .
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Why the decline in youth drinking? |
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A really interesting in-depth but small study asks young people in the North of England why there has been such a significant fall in youth drinking over the last decade, which is true for Scotland too. We know of course that your work with us to ensure that young people are equipped with the knowledge and skills to make safer choices fulfils part of the improvement as the student knowledge in this study finds. What is worrying, however, is the turning towards cannabis and its derivatives, its availability, cheapness and perceptions of risk.
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The three most commonly cited reasons for the decline in youth
drinking were ‘the potential for alcohol related harm’ (32%), contemporary
youth cultures and places of socialisation (27%), and ‘affordability’ (22%).
Young people described themselves as being able to enjoy themselves without
recourse to alcohol (‘They don’t need it to have fun’, C1 male) and relative to
prior generations, young people described themselves as having less free time,
as socialising less frequently, and as socialising in ways that did not require
leaving the home and/or face-to-face interaction. High cost was the third most commonly cited reason for the decline amongst
survey responses (22%).
Alcohol was argued to have lost much of its potency as a marker
of rebellion within youth culture: ‘you’ve not got the people trying to be like
“Oh, I’m breaking the rules, I’m doing something I shouldn’t”, trying to get
attention’ (Kelly, female, C2, rural). Young people across the age range noted
both a lessening of pressure from peers to consume alcohol (compared with what
they assumed had been the case previously) and a greater acceptance of
abstinence. Nevertheless, alcohol retained value as a social lubricant for
university students and there was a perception of other – and
othered—manifestations of peer culture, within which alcohol consumption was
more prevalent.
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Displacement of alcohol by other substances
All references during interviews to the displacement of alcohol by other substances occurred in discussions with older participants, potentially reflecting the greater likelihood of older adolescents having direct or indirect experience of wider substance use. Faith (female, C2 further education college), for example, explained that ‘there’s other things like drugs. If they’re not drinking alcohol I feel like they might be doing drugs such as weed.’ Weed (cannabis) was the most frequently mentioned alternative substance in all educational contexts.
Displacement of alcohol by other drugs was considered to be driven by ease of access: ‘it’s just easier to get other things now than it is to get alcohol because you don’t need ID to go and buy some drugs off some random man, do you?’ (Annabelle, female, C2, rural). For those in the deprived school where limited financial resources were noted as a barrier to alcohol use, drugs could also offer a cheaper alternative: ‘obviously alcohol’s monitored, it’s taxed, things like that, but obviously you can’t go to the shop and buy Spice, meaning you’re going to get it for less.’ (Liam, male, C2, urban deprived). Further, the relative risk of using cannabis, compared with consuming alcohol, was thought to be low: cannabis was argued to have ‘far more benefits than disadvantages’ (Charlotte, female, C2,urban affluent). Cannabis was felt to allow young people to experience a pleasurable ‘high’ without the risk of a hangover the following day and, for affluent young people, the consequent negative effects that this could have on school, university or other work. In this way, the displacement of alcohol by cannabis was framed as a positive choice.
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How is this relevant for Scotland?
The number of Scots suffering mental illness linked to cannabis has
surged. Figures reveal the number of users being hospitalised because of
psychiatric issues has climbed by 74% since 2016 when personal possession was
decriminalised.
Professor Jonathan Chick, medical director of a world-leading rehab clinic in the Borders says that “The eye has been taken off the ball with cannabis. We do need to worry about the numbers of young people presenting with psychosis and schizophrenia because of it.” Hospital stays due to mental or behavioural problems linked to cannabis use rose by 74% from 1,191 to 2,067 last year. And in 2020/21, a record 1,263 new patients sought hospital treatment for a range of psychiatric disorders blamed on the drug, including schizophrenia. A recent report by Public Health Scotland states: “There has been a notable increase in the percentage of [psychiatric hospital] stays attributed to cannabinoids in recent years, increasing from 9% in 2014/15 to 18% in 2019/20.”
Meanwhile, Harvard Medical School studied 246 new psychosis patients aged 16-35 and discovered that a total of 78% had used cannabis. In all, 47% were currently or had been dependent on the drug – compared with 5% in the general young population. The onset of the damage caused by cannabis was often swift. The typical age of first use was 15 with symptoms appearing between 17 and 19 and psychosis setting in between 19 and 21.
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How can we help?
For the last three years, the AET has been supporting 16+ around cannabis understanding and use. Please email shona@alcoholeducationtrust.org for free access to the PowerPoints, workshop materials and interactive materials – we can also deliver free training and have resources for younger teenagers too.
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Book your place now! National Drugs and Alcohol Education Conference 2023 |
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21st June 2023 - Newcastle University
We are delighted to say that tickets are now on sale for the National Alcohol and Drugs Education Conference 2023!
Book your place now via https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e... where you can also find further information about the day.
A limited number of early bird tickets are available.
About the conference
The conference will be a day for professionals to hear from leading experts on the latest research on alcohol and drugs prevention, attend a choice of workshops on evidence-based programmes and receive planning and evaluation advice for effective PSHE.
Keynote speaker: Joy Allen, joint lead for drugs and alcohol for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners
Conference Chair: Professor Chris Day Vice Chancellor Newcastle University
Confirmed speakers include:
- David Regis, Schools Health Education Unit - Latest trends in teen use and health and wellbeing
- Sally Ingram and Kay Hattam, Directors of Student Health and Wellbeing, Newcastle University- What is needed to prepare sixth formers for transition to college/university
- Kirsty Blenkins, Young People's Programme Manager, Addiction and Inclusion Directorate, Office for Health Inequalities and Disparities - Trends and developments in young people's drug use and Alice Taylor, Senior Digital Product Manager at DHSC responsible for Talk to Frank will talk about online support
- Children's Society - Child Criminal Exploitation: how it works, signs to look out for and how to protect and support children and young people
- Paul North, Director, Volteface and Ashly Fuller, PhD student, UCL - Young people's exposure to drugs on social media - data, risks and how to respond
- Helena Conibear, Founder and CEO of The Alcohol Education Trust- Alcohol and drug education: evidence- based approaches for a variety of settings that deliver behaviour change and improve outcomes for young people
- Fiona Spargo-Mabbs, Founder and Director of The Daniel Spargo-Mabbs Foundation - The role of parents and carers in drug education and Fiona's books for parents
- Kath Woods-Townsend, Programme Manager for Lifelab - Vaping: a young people informed approach for schools and youth settings to reducing uptake of vaping, level of vaping and increasing understanding among under 18’s
- Julie McCann, School Improvement Offices, School Improvement Liverpool - PSHE : the successes and the challenges particularly in relation to alcohol and drug education.
Afternoon workshops
Workshops will include:
- Delivering effective alcohol education
- Delivering effective drugs education
- Targeted alcohol education for more vulnerable young people including those with additional learning needs
Who should attend
The National Alcohol & Drugs Education Conference will be beneficial to anyone working in the field of alcohol and drugs with young people, including:
• Primary and secondary school teachers
• Headteachers
• Governors
• PSHE coordinators
• External education providers
• Community practitioners
• Local Authorities
• Public health professionals
• Charities
• Youth offender teams
• Social workers
• Youth workers
For any questions, please email kate@alcoholeducationtrust.org
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Ash and Sheffield City Council have developed an excellent set of resources around youth vaping which you can access via ASH resources on youth vaping - ASH The resources include posters, films, a teachers' toolkit and leaflets.
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Concerns over nitrous oxide hospitalisations |
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Charitable giving in Wills |
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Gifts to charities in Wills are a wonderful way of supporting a cause important to you in the future. Remembering AET in your Will would be an amazing legacy and support our work keeping young people safe around alcohol and other substances for years to come.
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We are so lucky to have a wonderful Board of Trustees at AET who bring a wide range of skills and expertise.
Following the retirement of Chris Benjamin after so many years of wonderful service we are delighted to welcome Richard Mangnall JP, FCILA, as a new Trustee. He is a Fellow and Past President of the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters and a JP . He is a past Trustee of the Inner London Magistrates' Courts Poor Box Charity which assists offenders with rehabilitation and currently monitors out of court disposals by the Police. In this latter capacity and during his time on the Bench, he has been all too well aware of the part played by alcohol and drugs in offending, particularly among young people, and the need for rehabilitating outcomes.
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