A new campaign will target middle-class drug users in order to prevent them from abusing illicit drugs at the weekends, the policing minister has announced.
According to The Times, Kit Malthouse said the government’s new strategy will involve a campaign that would “illustrate the impact” of illegal Class A drugs, such as cocaine, LSD and ecstasy.
Furthermore, the campaign will show what gang violence means in the streets of the UK and also the effect drug use and trade have on communities all around the world, especially in Central and South America.
Malthouse added: “In cities like Liverpool, Manchester and London, they see the dead kids on the news, they see what the impact of the drugs industry is on other people, but they don’t see the part they play in that violence and exploitation.”
More details of the strategy will be published in the autumn – along with a planned conference held by the Home Office that will be open for schools, universities, police forces, prosecutors, hospital trusts and employers.
In a statement, the Home Office said the campaign will be advertised on social media, public transport, billboards, TV and radio “to change people’s attitudes to casual drug use.”
This initiative comes after prime minister Boris Johnson apparently called for a change that would crack down on weekend cocaine use among young people.
One source told The Times in March: “In the late Eighties or early Nineties if you got your car keys out at the bar after three or four pints, nobody would say anything. You can’t do that now. Even if you don’t say something to them, you’d definitely say something to someone else.
“That’s not happening with drugs. We need to make them socially unacceptable. The PM wants to make it socially unacceptable to do drugs.
“The truth is, it was already illegal to drink and drive; it was just socially acceptable.”
As The Times writes – and as we reported last year – Boris Johnson has admitted past cocaine use but now he “thoroughly disagrees with drugs”.
