Drugs: the kids' stories
Updated on 27 February 2008
As the government launches its new 10-year drugs strategy we examine the attitudes of young people and their experiences with drugs.
The government's last ten-year strategy aimed to reduce the number of young people using drugs and stifle the availability of illegal substances.
The Home Secretary said today that there had been successes, with drug use at an 11-year low and drug-related crime down by 20 per cent in the past five years.
A key element with today's new strategy, as with the last such launch a decade ago, will be to reduce drug abuse among the young.
Channel 4 News will be featuring the thoughts of three young people about their attitudes to drugs in tonight's programme, including 17-year-old Sam.
'I thought that if everyone else was doing it, then it can't be that bad'- Sam
Sam's story.
Sam used to smoke cannabis until he passed out or could not walk.
The 17-year-old spent three years buying the substance on street corners, visiting drugs dealers homes and scoring it off friends.
He says people using the drug are getting "younger and younger" as cannabis seemingly becomes more and more accessible.
Sam, who lives in Wandsworth and has stopped smoking, said: "I first found out about cannabis when I was 12 or 13, but it seemed to be something the older kids were into - and I just took on board the school's message that drugs were bad.
"But when I got to about 14 I knew friends in my class were all getting into it; so I thought that if everyone else was doing it, then it can't be that bad.
"At that stage it was just a case of getting it through older friends, although you could just be standing at a bus stop and someone would ask if you wanted to buy some."
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Sam would pay £10 for enough cannabis to have "three or four spliffs". Supply was not a problem.
He said: "It turned out that it [cannabis] was never more than one or two phone calls away. By the end I had six or seven people who I could get in touch with to buy drugs.
"It was just people I'd got to know - or even friends who started buying it in bigger amounts so they could sell a bit on too.
"We would buy it off people from street corners too. Away from the main roads, away from the police. They'd only be one reason why these people were hanging about on street corners.
"And we got to know the dealers - and once they knew you they would let you into their houses.
"We'd have to go in and wait for about 20 minutes to make it look like it was a normal house visit, rather than just going to buy drugs.
"You can see from being in this environment that the age range of the kids doing it is getting younger and younger - because the availability of it is easy."
Sam dropped out of college earlier this year, and now hopes to start a career in the Armed Forces.
He warned that Government's renewed attempts to stifle drug supply could have negative consequences: "Last year when it was in the papers about a massive seizure of cannabis that was on route to London, we did notice that it had an effect.
"The dealers started developing techniques to make more from the supplies they had, often that would mean using a watery sugar solution. It had really, really bad side-effects. I've got bags under my eyes still from that time. I heard about people getting a hole in the lung too.
"The Government will never stop it completely; and by less of it being available it means the quality goes down it puts people's health even more at risk."
