UK - Children as young as seven to be taught the dangers of drugs

[chillinwill]

Children as young as seven will learn about drugs such as cocaine, Ecstasy and heroin under plans to reform sex and drugs education.

Lessons will begin at a younger age than currently despite fears they will spark an interest in experimenting where none previously existed.

Pupils aged five will learn to label body parts and how to keep safe from syringes under the shake-up, which is designed to tackle soaring levels of drug abuse and teen pregnancies.

The plans, which are being outlined today by Schools Secretary Ed Balls, will involve more lurid topics being introduced gradually.

From the age of seven, pupils will begin to learn about the dangers of cannabis and of Class A drugs such as cocaine, Ecstasy and heroin.

Ministers believe sex education is currently too 'patchy' and that schools should be obliged to deliver it, although they are expected to open a consultation on whether parents or individual schools should be able to opt out.

They are also expected to say that children of all ages should be entitled to drugs and alcohol education.

Currently most are thought to learn about illegal drugs and their harmful effects towards the end of their primary school years, with most drugs education concentrated on 11 to 16-year-olds.

But fears are growing that primary school pupils are increasingly aware of illicit drugs and in some cases are targeted by pushers.

The overhaul will pave the way for greater use of controversial teaching materials in primary schools such as Drugs Centre Stage.

This caused a furore two years ago after it emerged that pupils of nine were being encouraged to pretend to take and deal illicit drugs such as LSD and Ecstasy in role-play scenarios. The lesson packs also introduced pupils to drugs jargon such as 'fix', 'spliff' and 'hyping up'.

One character in a story says to her friend: 'I had an E a couple of weeks back. It really hypes you up and it didn't do me any harm.'

The Mail told last week how plans to impose compulsory sex education on primary schools could fuel demand for teaching booklets such as Let's Grow With Nisha And Joe, which invites six-year-olds to label the penis and vagina.

Ministers are expected to accept many of the recommendations of two expert working groups on sex and drugs education.

The overhaul follows an admission by Gordon Brown shortly before he became Prime Minister last year that the state of drugs education is 'pretty poor'.

'We are going to have to do more to provide drug education in our schools and you are going to have to start in the primary schools as well as the secondary schools,' he said.

A commission on drugs set up by the RSA charity concluded last year that drugs education should begin in the early years of primary school.

It said growing numbers of under-12s were being treated for substance abuse, mostly for alcohol and cannabis but also for cocaine, heroin and crack addictions.

However, it also acknowledged the limitations of formal drugs education, declaring that it 'apparently does not discourage people who either are undecided about whether to take drugs or are strongly inclined to experiment'.

It went on: 'In the worst cases, drugs education may even encourage drug use.'

The health education charity Life Education, which contributed to the Government's drugs and alcohol review, said it had found that children as young as seven and eight are learning about drugs.

By Laura Clark
Last updated at 1:50 AM on 23rd October 2008
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti....html?ITO=1490

Reputation Comments on this post:

Nice!

[Nature Boy]

Kids that young don't interact with cocaine and heroin. They should warn them about huffing petrol and sniffing glue although there's always a risk that this early drug education would have a reverse effect and actually end up encouraging children to experiment.

[Panthers007]

Officer Snoid lumbered into the cafeteria with his fold-out display. Bongo was 8 years old. The cop proceeded to tell the horrors of marijuana and LSD to the chimps. All listened attentively. The Occifur folded up his tent and marched 2, 3, 4 - Out The Door...

Nothing further was ever said about it. No one remembered a damn thing. Much more interesting things were going on. Mimi invited Bongo over to smoke some pot with her mother. No one cared a plug about it. Vietnam? Bobby Kennedy? Martin Luther King Jr? We knew the cool kids from the preachys. The year was 1968.

[chilling]

the parents are the ones that should explain the subject. i know i did not listen to school authority when they tried to leture us.

[enquirewithin]

Sex education is schools is a good thing, but this kind of misleading anti-drug education will only increase children's distrust of the authorities when they grow up and find they were deceived.

It may encourage some, too. When my cat was a kitten he would want to try anything that was forbidden.

[Panthers007]

Kids are All-Or-Nothing. So if an adult police-officer, who is the symbol of law and order, is found to be a liar - then ALL adults are liars. If the adult lied about marijuana by telling the kid that all "marijuana-addicts" end up in rat-infested basements with heroin needles sticking out of their arms - and because the kid knows his brother smokes marijuana and he's in the next room over (no rats) - then what about stealing stuff from stores? Is that bad, too? Hell no! The adults said it was and they are liars. And the kid likes those toy cars at the store and he can't afford 'em. So...

Thus begins the spiral into full-blown sociopathic behavior. All because Occifur Ratzbottom said marijuana is sending his brother to the basement with heroin.

Don't let the bastards lie to YOUR kids!

[dyingtomorrow]

Here's what happens:

Officer Dickhole comes in and tells the kiddies that marijuana is a horrible NARCOTIC that will ruin their lives.

They become teenagers and if they aren't dorks, they try it. The sky doesn't fall, and if they weren't already smart enough to know they were being fed bullshit, well, they learn it then.

Hopefully then they become weekend drinkers / coke users, the "adult marijuana," or maybe do ecstasy a couple times a year and fuck their bf/gf all night, and live a normal life going to work and shit.

Otherwise if they choose drugs like meth or heroin, which they might because they learned that law enforcement is completely full of shit, society will destroy their lives because their choice of escape was arbitrarily not approved (for the first time in like 8,000 years of human use, in the case of opiates), unlike (to varying degrees) everyone else's equally harmful escapes.

Of course, if you told them the truth it would be equally obvious what bullshit it is, so there's not much they can do.

[doggy_hat]

Great Idea! Get em when they're younger and more impressionable.

The Same tactics that the Christian Church and Hitler Youth used, now for the newest war against freedom, the drug war!

Mold their minds into the mind of an ideal drone before they're capable of realizing what's actually happening.

[superdupernaut]

I found out that my six year olds school was trying to encourage children to tell teachers if there parents use drugs so they could be 'helped'. This just further emphasizes why once their child enters school, parents who use drugs need to adopt a stratergy.

1) Keep their use on the down-low. No using infront of kids, keep drugs well hidden, don't talk about using/obtaining drugs around them. Don't kid yourself with this one. Kids often understand much more than they let on.

2) Make sure your kids are on the level. Be, (at least somewhat) candid about your own drug use. Let them know about the unjust laws, and the capacity they have for destroying families. Ask about what they are being told in class, and explain what is true and what is not. Make sure that what goes on in the home is private, and not to be discussed with outsiders, especially authority figures and people from the school.