Research by the National Advisory Committee on Drugs has found many teachers "have major difficulty" finding time to implement drug-prevention programmes. Published yesterday, the report said the Walk Tall and On My Own Two Feet programmes were being adopted by "a great many but by no means all schools in the country".
"One finding that emerges consistently is that teachers are favourably disposed to these programmes and regard them as educationally sound, but have major difficulties in finding the time to implement them," the report said.
"It is unfortunate that these particular programmes were begun at a time of such curricular change, which has seen major additions to the curriculum."
The report is the first from the NACD, which was established last year to advise the Government on the prevalence, prevention, treatment and consequences of problem drug use. Making a number of recommendations, it said:
Schools should be encouraged to develop policies on drug-prevention;
There should be an examination of the extent of implementation of existing school programmes/strategies;
There should be regular monitoring of the implementation of school-based programmes;
Prevention of early school-leaving should be at the core of any intervention;
Community support for school based programmes should be investigated because, on their own, school-based programmes are unlikely to have a major impact.
The report also identified the need to raise public awareness of the importance of deprivation as a cause of the most damaging forms of drug misuse "as a prelude to widespread acceptance of the necessity for the major resources that will be needed to deal with these problems". It said there should be inter-agency co-operation and community involvement in initiatives which attempt to tackle the social origins of drugs problems.
"Particular attention should be given to the structural planning of inter-agency co-operation on a scale and intensity that has not been evident in many interventions. It is essential that there be structural changes in all Government departments and especially in the Department of Education and Science to facilitate the multi-agency approach."
Its author, Dr Mark Morgan, said there was no single drug problem with one dramatic solution. There was instead varying degrees of involvement with a variety of substances and there was a need to target and prevent use of the most dangerous substances. "There is hardly a young person that is not at risk in some respect," he said. Using scare tactics to frighten children about the consequences of drug use was "worse than useless".
Launching the report, the Minister of State with responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy, Mr Eoin Ryan, said it would be used to inform a public awareness campaign on the prevention of drug misuse next year.