Correspondence

Preventing drug use in young people: commissioning letter

Published 27 July 2023

Rt Hon Chris Philp MP
Combating Drugs Minister
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

ACMD
Chair: Prof Owen Bowden-Jones
Prevention Standing Committee Secretary: Alasdair Forrest & Zahi Muhammad Sulaiman
1st Floor, Peel Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

ACMD@homeoffice.gov.uk

27 July 2023

Dear Owen,

Re: ACMD support on prevention of drug use in children and young people project

I am delighted that the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has stood up a new Prevention Sub-committee to support the UK Government in addressing and achieving our ambitions as set out in the 10-year Drug Strategy to reduce the demand for illicit drugs. I write to you in my capacity as cross-government Combating Drugs Minister and on behalf of all departments leading on delivery of the Drugs Strategy to commission this sub-committee to work alongside government in our mission to reduce drug use and the associated harms.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and the ACMD for your continued work to progress a number of projects commissioned by the Home Office, exploring important matters relating to drug misuse over recent years, including the rapid report produced on the prevention of drug use among vulnerable groups. We will respond to this report, and your letter on young peoples drug use by autumn 2023.

In the prevention report, recommendations one and two set out the need for evidence-based approaches to prevention. We support this and have invested in analysis of the challenges we face to allow for a whole-system look at where drug prevention programmes can be best targeted. With your support, the Drugs Strategy Ministerial Forum recently commissioned all departments leading on delivery of the 10-year Drug Strategy to commence a specific work strand focused on prevention of drug use in children and young people. Whilst there are opportunities to prevent drug use at all stages of an individual’s life course, the most and sustainable approach to reducing demand is building the long-term resilience of young people, where drug use is disproportionately high compared to other ages.

With your leadership, the ACMD Prevention Committee is posed to support government with the evidence and analysis to inform work on prevention of drug use in children and young people. Officials recently presented the government’s plan to map and assess the effectiveness of the current government response to supporting children and young people, which will report back into the Drugs Strategy Ministerial Forum.

I would be grateful for the Prevention Committee’s advice on what a whole-system response, nationally and locally, could be to prevent and reduce drug use and harm amongst 11-24 year olds over the 10-year scope of the Drugs Strategy. This should consider:

• A broad range of levers across all strategic priorities of the drug strategy and considers primary, secondary and tertiary prevention activities;
• How the most significant barriers can be removed to progress evidence-based solutions;
• What the most effective interventions and service models are to address these barriers, including evaluation of impact;
• Of the above, where there is work in-train, evidence of impact and what learning does this provide on the scalability.

The delivery of this work may include engagement with young people, international partners, academics looking at wider crime prevention and vulnerability, and other methods as determined by the Committee.

To ensure that we are able to incorporate findings from this group into future funding proposals to enhance and or establish new interventions to effectively reduce early onset of drug use among children and young people, we request outputs from the committee by the end of March 2024. Officials from the Joint Combating Drugs Unit (JCDU) are overseeing and coordinating the assessment of existing prevention activity within government and will continue to work alongside the Prevention Committee to join up respective findings. The Committee should work with the JCDU to refine the scope as required, for example in narrowing the scope by age.

Finally, I re-iterate our thanks to the members of the Council for their commitment to providing expert advice on this topic, and we look forward to working closely with the ACMD to achieve our 10-Year Drug Strategy ambitions.

Yours sincerely,

Rt Hon Chris Philp MP
Combating Drugs Minister