HC Deb 23 June 1988 vol 135 cc718-9W
Mr. Ken Hargreaves

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make available copies of the studies evaluating the efforts of the drug prevention and anti-injection publicity campaigns launched in September 1987.

Mrs. Currie

We have received reports from two studies commissioned to evaluate the effects of the drug prevention and anti-injecting campaigns and copies of the research studies have been placed in the Library.

In summary, the findings show that general awareness of advertising and publicity against heroin is as high as it has ever been since the Government's drug prevention campaign started in 1985. The drug prevention campaign seems to have consolidiated young people's negative attitudes towards drug misuse, and resistance to trying drugs remains at a high level. The anti-injecting campaign clearly communicated the risk of becoming infected with HIV through sharing equipment. The television commercial in particular was seen as accurate, authentic, and hard to deflect. It was praised by the majority of injectors interviewed. There was nothing in the research to suggest that the anti-injecting campaign had in any way undermined the drug prevention message by making other ways of misusing drugs seem more tempting.