More young people end up in hospital as price of heroin and cocaine falls

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Title – More young people end up in hospital as price of heroin and cocaine falls
Source – The Times
Date – 15th August 2008

With illegal drug use on the increase in young people and Class A drugs (especially Cocaine) increasing amongst the ‘young professionals’ 25-34 bracket, it points to a failure on the ‘war on drugs’ that most people are pretty honest about.

But it is a fight that must go on and as the fight grows, so must the response because we all know that drug dependency is not only a very big burden on our society, but the cause of much greater criminal activity.

Ironically many successful young professionals, who consider themselves ‘recreational drug users’, are really not in a better position then what we consider drug dependents to be. Much like problem gamblers they convince themselves that they are in control of their habit, which ironically is why they use the drug in the first place; to lose some of that self-control. The difference between them and the more traditional image of the drug addict, is that their disposable incomes feed their habits, as opposed to crime which feeds the habits of those drug dependents who don’t (or no longer) have high disposable incomes.

‘Recreational’ drug use has to an extent become acceptable in some arenas. How many people who work in high flying industries such as ‘the city’ can honestly say they don’t have colleagues who ‘dabble’ in the odd ‘line’; more importantly how many do anything positive about it?

Sadly more and more of these people willing to ignore these users will soon be able to add their name to the list of people who would be able to answer ‘Yes’ to the question “who knows someone who has been admitted to hospital because of drugs?”.

The problem is not going to get better if younger and younger people are taking class A drugs as a matter of habit; these are after all the next generation and it will only be two or three more years before they are the ‘young professionals’

Drug use leads to problems beyond the users themselves. In many organisations drug use endangers other customers or employees and in some cases even the organisation or business itself. In the Licensed Retail Sector, drug use can lead to reputations being lost, swiftly followed by business being damaged, followed shortly afterwards by premises licences being suspended or forfeited and large fines being issued. In other organisations employees have to deal with drug fuelled individuals with aggressive behaviour that can be unpredictable and very violent.

At Beyond The Blue we run bespoke drug awareness courses as well as nationally recognised qualifications such as the National Certificate for Licensees – Drug Awareness (NCLDA) and Conflict Management & Resolution Courses (CMR) that help those who work with or in environments where aggression and violence are just one of the sad consequences of drug use.

Please visit our website please visit at www.btbl.co.uk