DOING DRUGS WITH
PAUL DILLON

Music festivals like the Big Day Out, Splendour in The Grass and Good Vibrations have all become major events, with most capital cities and even some of the smaller cities across the country hosting such events. Over the years I have been involved with the organisation and running of some major dance parties and have also been contracted by a number of promoters to assist them with advice around alcohol and other drug safety. Years ago these events were only open to those aged 18 years or over but in recent times there has been a major shift and we are now seeing younger and younger teens attending music festivals. One of the questions I get asked by many parents is what happens at these events and should I allow my child to attend? Firstly I would say from a person who has attended dance festivals (in days gone by), as well as worked at many (from an organizer, medical, law enforcement liaison and crowd control perspective) I believe that these are not appropriate for a...

The issue of medical cannabis poses an increasingly difficult problem for those trying to provide cannabis prevention messages to young people. Since a number of American states have made 'medical marijuana' available I have had more and more students question why the drug is illegal in this country if it used as a 'medicine' in other countries. I'm also being asked by parents attending my presentations how best to handle questions around the issue ... I'm not the biggest fan of American TV comedies but recently I have watched a couple of such shows that have based the week's episode around the availability of medical cannabis - as you can imagine, hilarity ensues! When you think how much our society is saturated with American pop-culture references and how much these influence our day-to-day life, it's not surprising that some young Australians are starting to believe that cannabis is also available in this country for therapeutic purposes. Even those...

Anybody who has ever heard me present knows that a big part of my talks are 'stories' – things that have happened to young people and their parents that I have met over the years. Their names are changed and any information that may identify a particular person or event is altered, but it is usually these anecdotes that have the greatest impact on those attending my presentations. With as many talks as I give I sometimes worry that there will be someone in the audience who may know the person I am talking about – no matter how well disguised there are some stories that may be identified by some. I faced this same dilemma when I wrote Teenagers, Alcohol and Drugs a few years ago. Should I get the person's permission if I use a story they told me? How would someone feel if they pick up the book and find their story on the pages? As I said in the introduction to the book, my concern was addressed when I was giving a presentation to a group of educators in Perth. Since 2...

    The story of two secondary school students caught with steroids at a private boys school in Queensland last week received national attention. Details of what they were selling and/or using have not been made public but what made this story particularly interesting is that it is the first time in my memory that performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) have been seized in a school setting. The principal responded swiftly and when you go to the school website there is a  message from him that acknowledges that the "... incident, while serious, highlights the issues associated with body image for young men." He goes on to write that the "... College will continue its drug education program throughout the pastoral care program with a renewed interest and effort around body enhancing drugs and supplements." So should we be worried about PIEDs and supplements? What does the evidence say and is use increasing amongst secondary scho...

Put simply, there is no such thing as a 'recreational drug'. It is a term not used in the scientific literature and anyone from the alcohol and other drug field who knows what they're talking about would never use it. Politicians and the media love the term, tossing it around frequently and then yell and scream about the term being 'inappropriate' – when in actual fact, they are the only ones who really use it! Although there are no such things as recreational drugs, there is 'recreational drug use'. Maybe that seems like semantics but there really is a huge difference. It would appear that the media and some politicians use the term to describe a particular drug that is somehow less problematic than others. It is frequently used to describe drugs such as ecstasy and amphetamine ('speed'), but has also been used in discussions about many other substances. This is a little like the terminology 'soft drugs' and 'hard drugs', words...

Watching the 'Binge drinking crisis' piece on 'A Current Affair' during the week (before you ask, I had to, it's part of my job!), many would believe that we now have more young people drinking than ever before and almost all of them go out every weekend and get absolutely smashed! If you believe what you read in the papers and see on the TV (and why would you ever do that?), most young people have also used illicit drugs at some stage or another. In fact, all the evidence that we have says just the opposite. Most illicit drug use is now at lower rates in Australia than it was in the 1990s, with the exception of cocaine and ecstasy, and most school-based young people see drug use as pretty ‘uncool’. At a time when our younger generation are getting a ‘bad rap’ from the media it is important that we maintain some perspective. When it comes to alcohol use, the latest ASSAD survey of school-based young people showed that we have growing numbers of studen...

I have been totally blown away by the number of people who have accessed my blog through the entry on 'Strawberry Quik' - the urban myth around methamphetamine supposedly flavoured to entice young people. The Facebook warning pops up occasionally via someone's page and thank goodness some sensible people are going to the web to try and access some accurate information. Another urban myth that I thought was long gone was around the so-called 'Blue Star' tattoo. Stories about drug manufacturers and dealers targeting very young children have been around for many years. The ‘Blue Star’ tattoo myth is possibly the most famous of these and goes back to 1980, although some say the story was circulating earlier than that. There was a time when I was responding to queries about this every couple of months, particularly in the late 1990s, but over the last few years it seemed to have gone quiet - that is until this week when I was contacted by a journalist who had hea...