FDS Insight Newsletter Jul-Sep 2020

10 something pleasurable because they were told it was also risky? Of course, some teenagers are risk-adverse, as I was, and will stay away from drugs, as I did, but very many are not, and neither more information nor the cosy chat with mum and dad will change that. I have had it pointed out to me calmly and reasonably, by the most rational of my sons, that a great many activities, including many undertaken purely for pleasure, such as skydiving or skateboarding, involve risk. Drug use for recreational and spiritual purposes has been a Feature or probably every human society. This does not constitute any kind of positive argument for drug use, but the onus is surely on me to show why it is intrinsically worse than other inherently risky but legally permitted activities. I may not think the pleasure of drug use, or the insights it might sometimes permit, are worth the risk, but there comes a time when they will decide, not me, which risks they take. This transition takes place during the teenage years, it often happens sooner than we parents would like, and we know that some of our children will make bad decisions and some of them will be hurt. But what is the alternative? Risk is part of life and we don’t want them to be ruled by fear. We need to teach our children to manage risk, to reduce it, not just avoid it. We don’t stop them from skateboarding, we urge them to wear safety gear. We don’t stop them from going into the surf, we tell them to swim between the flags. If we can’t stop them from using drugs, we should at least ensure that they have the relevant safety information. Genuinely open communication with your kids is a good thing and leads to a better relationship. But it doesn’t, in my experience, mean they won’t experiment with drugs. It means that you’re more likely to hear about it if they do. Moral hysteria about drugs surely produces the same secrecy, the same shutting out of parents from their children’s lives as moral hysteria about sex did in my growing-up years. They do it to protect us as well as themselves. In the case of drugs, they do it also because we make ourselves irrelevant. The dangers we are trying to alert them to are unlikely to be taken seriously when the booklet that outlines them is so undiscriminating. The government strategy encourages parents to cry wolf. Are we really meant to be equally opposed to sniffing inhalants, heroin use, the occasional joint and the use of ecstasy? Once again, the government pamphlet suggests we should be. ‘All illicit drugs carry risks and are dangerous. There is no safe level of use, ‘ it proclaims. This is a significant exaggeration. Though I am very concerned about the use of marijuana by teenagers, I can’t manage to convince myself, and I’m sure I couldn’t convince them, that smoking small quantities of marijuana, two or three times a years, say, is particularly dangerous, more dangerous than riding their bike to school each day. And though many teenagers have been deterred from ecstasy use by the tale of Anna Wood, many others tell you correctly that such deaths are extraordinarily rare – far more rare than deaths From overdose of that gentle-to- the-stomach household staple,