The number of young people in Britain experimenting with drugs is growing and that country is now moving towards "the normalisation of recreational drug use," Prof Howard Parker of the University of Manchester told the seminar.
A 1995 survey found that close to half of all 16-year-olds had tried an illegal drug. Studies are also showing that drug experimentation is happening earlier, with 11 to 13-year-olds now trying drugs more often than before.
Preventive drugs education does not seem to be working, said Prof Parker, who is the director of social policy for the Management of Social Problems unit at his university.
"Unless policy-makers, and in particular politicians, begin to grasp the enormity of the shift in attitudes and behaviour amongst young people in respect of recreational drug use, we will continue to flounder around throwing tens of millions of pounds at ineffective drugs education."
Current British policy involved the criminalisation of large numbers of otherwise law-abiding citizens and widened the gulf between those over and under 30 years of age, he said. Government should stop being obsessed with adolescent drug triers and start planning for the minority who would have problems as drug users and would move into adulthood with worrying drug careers.
Young people who wanted to get drugs could easily do so from friends of friends, not from pushers. "A young person who does not want to have anything to do with drugs thus has to say No not once but dozens of times during their adolescence".
Most young drug-takers pay for their drugs from pocket-money or part-time earnings. Young drug-users in England are now as likely to be female as male. By late adolescence class differences are minimal. "Indeed, higher education students have enormous drugs appetites," Prof Parker said.
Drugs are being used wherever young people congregate. Young people who have decided never to experiment with drugs still must get used to the presence of drugs at social gatherings.
Prof Parker criticised British government policy that argued that youthful drug-taking led to crimes over and above drug possession or supply.
"If half of a sixth form in a successful traditional grammar school have tried cannabis and around half of all British university students have done drugs, then we have a major problem upholding the law." The moral authority of the law was being undermined, he said.
Drug education strategies were being driven by political expedience. "I suspect the real debate will only occur when the situation gets so out of hand that the pressure for a rational debate finally gets politicians to change," Prof Parker said.
"Cannabis dominates young people's drug use and it is with this drug's use that we need to grapple. I personally would want to see a drugs cautioning system for personal use which basically de-criminalised possession." No other drugs should be considered in the same way.
Prof Parker said the "war on drugs" approach failed to distinguish between drugs. By failing to distinguish between cannabis and heroin, society was failing to protect early adolescents from a "return of heroin".
The situation in Ireland did not seem as serious or as developed as that in Britain. However, given the heroin problem in Dublin and the developing dance drug and recreational drug scene, there was a danger of the overlapping and blurring of the different arenas.
