The only sensible message for universal drugs education, in the later years of secondary education at least, is one that has harm reduction as its main objective.

Where drugs education is delivered to whole secondary school classes, the message can and should be more complex than it is in primary school. A good first line of argument may still be that it is safer not to take drugs at all and, if a pupil is not doing it already, he or she should start..

But at this stage drugs education should acknowledge that a substantial minority of pupils will actually have started to experiment and that they need therefore to know how to manage their experimentation as safely as possible. In addition, a small minority of pupils may already be having problems with drugs. Presenting drug use as something with stigma and shame attached to it will discourage them from acknowledging that they may have a problem. Instead they need to be told where they can get help.