Drug-related Admissions

Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services — Postponed from 8 November – in the Senedd at 2:19 pm on 15 November 2017.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 2:19, 15 November 2017

Again, I recognise the question. I refer to education in its broadest sense, because I don't think there's just an issue for the school system. It's an issue of partnerships between the third sector, between the police, between ourselves, and people in communities as well, and how we equip people with the best possible advice on the impact of the various substances that are available, but also how you deal with challenges like peer pressure that exist in a whole range of different settings. We made a difficult choice in the budget about some of the choices we had to make on budgetary matters, but I do know that in discussion with the Cabinet Secretary for Education, we were thinking about how the new curriculum may help to equip people to make different choices. But it isn't simply a matter for the curriculum or for the quality of teaching and learning within our schools; it is a much broader societal challenge. That's why, for example, we fund Dan 24/7. That is, as it says, a 24-hour seven-day-a-week bilingual advice line, trying to take away some of the things that people may fear in going to figures in authority or responsibility to ask for support or advice. So, this is part of the honest challenge that every part of the UK and further afield faces: the range and the variety of interventions, the support mechanisms that we have, and understanding what is successful in allowing us to most effectively combat the challenge that we have. But as I said at the end to Caroline Jones, this isn't easy, we shouldn't pretend it is, but absolutely, there's a really powerful reason to want to try and understand what is the most effective response, and then to weigh, measure, understand and evaluate whether that's had the effect that we wanted it to.