Services are advised to adapt to changing trends in youth drug use

The number of young people taking drugs is falling, according to official figures.

Crime survey statistics show that 19 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds used an illicit drug in the past year, compared with 23 per cent in 2008/09 and 30 per cent in 2001/02. Meanwhile, Department of Health figures reveal that 12 per cent of 11- to 15-year-old school pupils report having taken drugs in the past year, compared with 15 per cent in 2008 and 20 per cent in 2001. The statistics are backed by a fall in the number of young people seeking treatment – down to 21,955 in 2010/11 from 24,053 in 2008/09. Class A drug use among 16- to 24-year-olds has dropped from nine per cent in 1996 to six per cent in 2011/12, according to the Home Office.

But changing trends in substance use have prompted concerns that services may not be serving the needs of those who are using drugs, meaning young people either do not seek, or are not given, the right help.

Harry Shapiro, director of communications at Drugscope, says that drug trends “go in cycles”. “Many treatment agencies are set up for crack cocaine and heroin problems, but nowadays young people are not coming forward with those problems,” he says. “The newer drugs, such as so-called legal highs and recently classified substances like mephedrone, are certainly causing problems for young people.”

The Club Drug Clinic was launched in September 2011 at Chelsea and Westminster hospital, amid concerns that young people were not accessing treatment because services were overwhelmingly geared to address the use of crack cocaine and heroin.

Owen Bowden-Jones, founder and clinical lead, says the clinic’s services are designed around the health problems caused by club drugs, such as cocaine powder, ecstasy, mephedrone and ketamine. In addition to psychiatric help, the clinic offers sexual health screening and has recently taken on an urologist to deal swiftly with bladder problems caused by ketamine use.

Bowden-Jones says services must be responsive to emerging trends, such as new compounds of drugs and issues of harm related to the way in which young people are using them. “One of the purposes of the clinic is as an early warning system,” he says. “We see large volumes of people, so it gives us a sense of new harms and any trends there may be.”

The clinic is working on engagement strategies to ensure young people use the service. This includes promoting the clinic with QR codes – black pixelated icons that can be scanned by a mobile phone, enabling young people to visit a self-referral page on the clinic’s website.

“It’s important that these services are open access so you don’t have to go through your GP,” he says. “There also needs to be cultural competency among the staff. They need to be familiar with the conversations that young people have, the drugs and their harms, so that they are credible.”

Adam Winstock is a consultant addictions psychiatrist and founder of the Global Drugs Survey, which this year attracted 7,500 respondents from the UK.

He says that for many young people, drug taking does not affect their daily activities, although some want to cut down and a small minority feel they need help to stop taking drugs altogether. He advocates a harm-reduction approach and has launched a “drugs meter” – an online tool that tells a person how their drug use compares with others, taking their individual features into account. 

But Winstock agrees that the drop in the number of young people reporting use does not necessarily mean that less damage is being caused by drugs.

“Prevalence is not the best marker of drug-related harm,” he says. “You might have fewer people using drugs, but they may also be a much more vulnerable, disenfranchised group that are dropping out of school. We need to be slightly inventive with the way we engage young people.”