Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle underage drug use.

This Government is committed to protecting young people from the harms of drug use through a range of universal and targeted prevention activity and are using the recent report from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) ‘A Whole-System Response to Drug Prevention in the UK’ to inform our approach.

The Home Office is also working with The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to deliver an Innovation Fund to Reduce Demand for Illicit Substances to help us build our longer term understanding of how to prevent and reduce drug use, prevent associated harms and facilitate behaviour change.

Ketamine use in young people is increasing, so we have commissioned the ACMD to update their harms assessment on the drug, and DHSC have launched a media campaign to raise awareness of the risks posed by new drug trends and products. The campaign focusses on the adulteration of counterfeit medicines with other drugs like synthetic opioids, ketamine harms and adulteration of ‘THC vapes’.