DOING DRUGS WITH
PAUL DILLON

In the past few months I've been contacted by a number of parents who have reached out for advice in relation to their teen's drug use. In some cases they discovered what their child had been up to completely by accident (e.g., finding a bag of pills and caps in dirty washing), others had police call to inform them their teen had been arrested and could they come to the local station, while others were summoned to school to be told their teen was being expelled for dealing. To ensure confidentiality all of the stories discussed in this piece have been slightly altered but they'll hopefully give you the general idea. None of the stories are unique and although the available evidence clearly shows that the vast majority of school-based young people do not illicit drugs, some teens will experiment and will suffer the consequences if they get caught. What blew me away about all these cases, however, was that each and every one of these teens purchased their drugs via social med...

One of the worst aspects of living in a COVID-19 world is the uncertainty that accompanies the pandemic. As the past week or two has shown us, things can change very quickly and just as we seemed to be returning to some degree of normalcy, we suddenly get the rug pulled out from beneath us and we find ourselves right back where we were a year ago ... What has saddened me greatly is receiving messages from young people across the country who are absolutely devastated that something they were looking forward to was suddenly ripped away from them due to a lockdown. Here is one such email: "My name is Anya and I've just turned 16. This weekend I was going to be having my 16th birthday party but it's just been announced that we're going to go back into lockdown and we've had to cancel it. Everything that was planned has now gone. It was going to be amazing and the first real party my year group has had since COVID. Everyone was looking forward to it because we haven...