Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the level of substance abuse by teenagers.

The Department jointly leads, with the Home Office, the Reducing Demand strand of the Government’s 2010 Drug Strategy ‘Reducing demand, restricting supply, building recovery: supporting people to live a drug-free life'. The third annual review of the drug strategy published last month highlights recent and planned developments in our programme of work to create resilience amongst those who do not take drugs and to support those that do misuse drugs to stop.

The strategy includes universal actions aimed at all young people, and targeted actions for those most at risk of using drugs or who have already started using drugs, and tackles the range of risk factors that make people vulnerable to substance misuse. Key elements of the strategy are:

- Talk to FRANK, which provides up-to-date impartial information and advice about drugs and how to resist them;

- ‘Rise Above’, recently launched by Public Health England (PHE), which is an online resource and social movement for young people, designed to build their resilience and empower them to make positive choices for their health;

- Helping schools to draw on expert advice and develop evidence-based practice, including funding the Alcohol and Drug Education and Prevention Information Service (ADEPIS), run by Mentor UK; and

- PHE providing support for the development of Joint Strategic Needs Assessments by local areas to help ensure that young people’s substance misuse services target vulnerable young people.