Excerpts from a speech given by Diana Dale Gough, a Board Member for Kids Count at the European drugs conference held in Belgium earlier this month!

My view on drugs and their damaging effect on all sections of society, comes from years of voluntary work of all kinds, local politics, and coming close to being elected to the Houses of Parliament reducing a majority from 4000 to 400.

My view is that politics and many politicians are letting people down.

The sophisticated use of language by the liberals and some politicians are letting our young people down.

For example they talk about “soft” drugs and “recreational” use, making it all sound such fun, okay and positive.

They talk of choices about drug use. In what other area of illegal behaviour do we advocate choices, - Theft, Violence, Murder?

They talk of Human Rights, when the truth is that applying the drug users human rights and freedom of choice will, ironically, rob them of their very freedom of choice as they become slaves to drugs and the next fix.

Use of Language again.

If you want to understand the current ‘language abuse’ which surrounds ‘drug abuse’ then remember the following typical examples:

For informed choices - read laissez-faire, for realism -read surrender, for normalisation - read decriminalisation, for prohibition read “the current laws almost all of us support”.

Libertarians in politics, media the law etc believe that preventing a behaviour, however damaging and negative that behaviour should be, is paternalism, authoritarianism and prohibition of personal freedoms.

They believe that to impose any kind of morals is wrong, in other words that the young should learn in a moral vacuum.

Well we have news for them, don’t we? The silent majority of parents and other citizens don’t want children and young people to use drugs. The sad thing is that they just feel that they have no voice.

They feel no-one speaks out for them or is listening. We know that is just not so but we have to make them realise they are not alone.

And we could help them to realise that not every kid – even in Britain where drug abuse figures lead the rest of Europe – is involved in drugs. The figures in Britain show that 5 out of 10 young people will try illegal drugs but only 3 of those 5 will try more than twice, in other words 8 out of 10 will never use at all or give up after two uses. Of course even these levels of use are too many, but the truth is that we are a long way from having to surrender, as the liberals want us to do.

WE HAVE AMONG OTHER THINGS A NEW RESPONSE IN BRITAIN.

Linda Lawrence, a friend and a colleague with help from me has started a think tank in the UK called Kids Count.

This was formed this because we feel that our young are not all bad by a long stretch, but that they are being badly let down. That the rush towards Human Rights and Political Correctness is destroying their future.

We believe that young people are desperate for help and guidance. They want to be set firm parameters of behaviour and morals.

We believe it is appalling that there has been a constant creep towards depriving parents of any say over their children’s future and education, from discipline to sex, from birth control to relationships. Increasingly children’s human rights are put before the responsibilities of their parents.

Children need guidance, they need to be taught the difference between right and wrong. They also need positive role models of both sexes in their lives.

Kids Count is to formulate policies effecting young people from birth to 25 years old and to try to get politicians, opinion formers and lawmakers to listen.

To tackle bullying, abuse, gun and knife crime, alcohol and drugs issues, homelessness, educational failure, mental and physical health etc.

Many of these problem areas, although of course not in all cases, but in a fair number, will be directly attributable to drugs use.

Family breakdown, - 59% of Methadone users have lost contact with their children. Children need a secure home environment, ideally with two parents who are ideally married. Mainly because figures show that children of married parents fare better than children from single or divorced parents.

Educational failure with second and third generation users and even some of their teachers using. These young people have an inability to concentrate if they are drugs users and are concentrating on where to get their next fix from.

The definite linkage of drugs and alcohol use.

Welfare dependency because of an inability to hold down a job which in turn leads to indebtedness.

Drugs users have more accidents whether at work or driving.

Perhaps worst of all mental and physical health problems.

Here are some statistics that we in the UK should be bitterly ashamed of.

We are now top of the European league for teenage pregnancies, substance use and binge drinking. We have younger and younger children trying drugs, some of course may be to show-off or mimic older siblings but not all.

This is a downward spiral of learned behaviour. A serious decline in morality, ethics and personal esteem. It is a mental and physical health time bomb waiting to explode.

Our prisons are universities for drugs and just as sad our universities are universities for drugs.

Drugs are readily available between prisoners in many prisons.

Many enter prison having never tried drugs and leave as users.

Drugs are available in all types of prisons, young offenders, women’s and men’s prisons.

Payment arrangements are often carried out by those outside the prisons, with mothers and partners collecting payment. Open visits facilitate an easy passing in of these drugs so more rigorous searches are required. It comes down to funding again, we have few sniffer dogs for prison use. These are essential because of the many ingenious hiding places used to pass on these drugs.

If you want to check out Kids Count go to our website www.kidscount.org

However, I don’t advocate shooting the user but perhaps stopping them from shooting up. We must educate them.

So what do we need to do? We all know.

We need funding and residential places for drug treatment and rehabilitation.

We need tougher laws and enforcement.

We need sentences set aside if the offender attends substance use education courses.

Prevention must be recognised for the best road we have.

Policies should not be left in the hands of those with vested interests and agendas.

For example, many of the committees in the Houses of Parliament are funded by people with vested interests; they provide the secretary for the committee etc. Thus you have for example large pharmaceutical companies with a direct sway over committees perhaps looking at the use of Ritalin for young people.

We need politicians to take notice of the voluntary sector who know what they are talking about. We have to keep hammering home our messages until they listen to us rather than shoot the messenger.

We need to change attitudes and behaviour.

We need to celebrate and encourage the good even more so than punishing the bad.

Most of all we need funding for prevention – What prevention really means – language again, is to work across our communities ‘pre the event.’

It is useful for us to keep in mind that “if we always do what we always did, we will always get what we always got.” And our societies deserve much better than that!