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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Drugs 'are a problem in every school in this area'
This is Richmond
Thursday 30 Aug 2001 Every school in Kingston has pupils who regularly misuse drugs, according the director of leading drugs charity Kaleidoscope. The Reverend Martin Blakebrough said evidence gathered from pupils themselves suggested that obtaining drugs had become easier. His statement follows the publication of a survey revealing one in five schools in England and Wales has to deal with cases of drug abuse among pupils. The national survey, commissioned by the National Union of Teachers (NUT), questioned 2,575 teachers in 1,978 primary and secondary schools across 13 local authorities. The findings corroborate an earlier study by the Kingston and Richmonds director of public health which revealed that one in four 15-year-old boys in both boroughs had experimented with drugs. Dr Carole Martin, the author of the inequalities in childrens health report, published in February, found that three per cent of girls have taken hard drugs, such as cocaine and crack, by the age of 15. However, Rev Blakebrough, who accompanied a BBC camera crew to Kingston town centre on Monday to speak to teenagers, said that pupils were mainly experimenting with soft drugs. Because of the stigma attached to drug abuse, he said, schools refused to admit they had a drugs problem, and as a result failed to deal with the issue effectively. Lets come clean and say every school in Kingston has a drugs problem, he said. Schools have become increasingly competitive in attracting pupils and they are terrified of admitting drugs misuse in the school. If we were to test every pupil in a Kingston school for drugs, there is no doubt that we would find several in each school who were positive. He said the usual way of dealing with pupils misusing illegal drugs was exclusion, but this only served to perpetuate the problem. We need to work together in finding the appropriate way of dealing with drugs in schools. The solution is counselling students and offering appropriate treatment, not exclusion which can make the problem worse for the student. He suggested schools employ an independent drugs liaison officer based at the school, from whom pupils could seek advice without fear of exclusion. In June, three pupils from St Pauls School, Barnes, were expelled for possessing cannabis.
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