ADEPIS - How can teachers include legal highs in their A&D education programme? - KIP Education

How can teachers include
legal highs in their alcohol
and drug education
programme?
www.kipeducation.com
KIP Education presents:

“[It’s] not that teens are stupid or incapable … it’s sort of
unfair to expect them to have adult levels of
organisation skills or decision-making before their brain
is finished being built.”
Jay Geidd, Neuroscientist, US National Institutes of Health

What makes drug education effective?
1. Environment:
• Underpinned by a whole school approach
• Enhanced by family-based prevention programmes

2. Planning:
• Relevant and responsive to the developmental stage and
circumstances of the children and young people
• Taught in the context of other personal, social and health
issues.
• Manageable given available resources
• Informed by programmes that produce achievable outcomes
• Developmental: re-visited, consolidated and extended
throughout childhood and youth
• Supported by appropriate training
• Evidence based and/or evaluated

3. Practice:
• Create a comfortable classroom climate
• Uses interactive teaching styles
• Be responsive to different cultural views and realities
• Include a normative component

4. Content:
• Explore attitudes to drugs and drug users
• Provide children and young people with opportunities to
develop social skills
• Use credible, reliable and up-to-date sources to explore,
contrast, and, where appropriate, support (or challenge)
attitudes to self and others, to drugs, to drug use and non-use
- and to drug users and non-users
• Strengthen protective factors
• Minimise risk factors

5. Evaluation:
• Assessment
• Monitoring
• Impact evaluation

Defining Drug Terms and Use
• In the broadest terms, a drug is “… any substance which
changes the way the body functions, mentally, physically
or emotionally”.
• Focus on changes in the body and/or behaviour brought
about through the use of such substances. These
substances are also referred to as psychoactive drugs,
meaning that they affect the central nervous system and
alter mood, thinking, perception and behaviour.
• Use definitions that make no distinction between the
legality, social acceptability or ‘value’ of drugs.

Defining Drug Terms and Use
• Blanket definitions often have weak logic underpinning
their meanings, making them vulnerable to challenge,
particularly in terms of highlighting inconsistencies.
• Once a broad, working definition of drugs has been
established, one is better placed to discuss the health,
personal and social costs arising from substance use.
• This does not mean that the legal status of any drug is
not important;
• It acknowledges that the risks arising from drug use are
not present exclusively in relation to the criminal/justice
system.

Drug use does not automatically lead to addiction nor is it universally
characterised by behaviours associated with dependent substance
use. If our responses to drug use are to be effective, they have to be
embedded in this understanding.
The diagram presents a simplified model of the different stages or levels
of drug use, starting with a Drug Free stage.

Drug, Set & Setting

Examples of lesson plans

Main harms of NPS/legal highs
Health Problems
• Mental disorder: anxiety, psychosis, mood
• Dependence: craving, tolerance, withdrawals
• Physical health: ‘route’ damage, diseases
• Poisoning: acute intoxication, overdose
• Death: fatal ODs, accidents, suicide
Social Problems:
• crime & CJS, relationships, children, social exclusion,
discrimination etc.
Economic Problems:
• personal debts, policy costs etc.
Extent of these problems: mostly unknown

• Schools need to maximise the effectiveness of school-
based programmes through efforts to keep young people
engaged in school.
• The identification and provision of this supports at-risk
children, management of drug-related incidents and a
broad-based curriculum which supports all aspects of the
child’s development.
• Effective drug education can promote a working
partnership between schools, parents and the community,
facilitating a coherent and measured response which is
specific to the individual school.

Drug education will certainly challenge the teacher’s own values and
attitudes.
Teachers have expressed feelings of being ill-equipped in this area.
However:
• Effective teaching about drugs has the same characteristics as good
teaching in any subject.
• It is important to identify existing pupil knowledge as a starting point.
• Drug education within the school setting needs to be part of an
integrated curriculum rather than separating out drugs and alcohol
from the rest of their education
• Staff training needs, should include regular updates to reinforce and
review knowledge and skills

Resources
• http://www.whynotfindout.org (e-learning, information and videos)
• For an overview of the benefits of legalising drugs, their pros and cons,
Count the Costs initiative entitled 'The War on Drugs: Options and
Alternatives'.
http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/options-briefing.pdf
• http://www.substance.org.uk/ (Leaflets and factsheets)
• www.kipeducation.com
• www.kipeducation.com/blog
Or join us on Facebook
Or Twitter @kipeducationUK

ADEPIS - How can teachers include legal highs in their A&D education programme? - KIP Education

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ADEPIS - How can teachers include legal highs in their A&D education programme? - KIP Education