While the UK is facing up to a growing lifestyle culture in which smoking, taking drugs and binge drinking are becoming the benchmarks of a 'good' night out, headlines in recent weeks have flagged up alarming rises in instances of alcohol-fuelled violence, graffiti and crime committed by young people.

Hope UK is a Christian charity, founded originally in 1847 as Band of Hope, that trains drug educators in local churches to work within the wider community, enabling young people of all faiths and none to make drug-free choices.

Christian Today met up with the Executive Director of Hope UK, George Ruston, to find out just how bad the drug culture is among Britain's young people in particular and what is being done to fix it.


CT: Where is Hope UK right now in terms of its drug work?

GR: Well, we started in 1847 as Hope UK as Band of Hope and whereas our predecessor would have had literally thousands of children's groups up and down the country, what we are doing now is training people who work in children's groups. As half of our work is outside church networks, they work in secular youth groups, parents' groups and organisations. And the point of their work is to enable children young people make drug-free choices as they grow up.

The main thing is that it's not just about giving information. It's about equipping people to live responsible lives and fulfil their potential - to live their lives to the full, if I can paraphrase John 10:10.

That incorporates a lot of mainstream health promotion as well. If we are working in a context that is secular, then to talk to people about making the most of their lives and being healthy, to care for others by the example of what they do as well as helping when things go wrong, then that is absolutely mainstream health promotion and those are absolutely the basic principles of Christian living.

In that sense, we straddle the Christian world and also every other world as well.

CT: And you work with all faiths and none?

GR: That's right. We are a specialist Christian agency doing drug education. All our educators are Christians, all our staff are Christians, but we reach out.

And there is so much that the church can do. There are 50,000 local churches. Half of them do youth work. More than half of them are doing children's work, and they have access to parents and grandparents.

We are about encouraging people not to start and that's something that applies to everybody. It's not a specialist job in that sense. It's just part of good youth and children's work.

CT: There have been several headlines lately highlighting the high drug and alcohol consumption among young people. Do you think the church is on board with these issues?

GR: I think different parts of the church are doing different things. Some parts of the church are going forward and getting involved in alcohol and drug issues - and when I say drugs I would include alcohol and tobacco because they are the biggest drug problems. Tobacco is responsible for 112,000 deaths a year. In England alone, alcohol is responsible for 22,000 deaths. And if you take all of the illegal drugs, they are responsible for about 5,000 deaths.

And all the problems that go with drug abuse, particularly alcohol abuse - the crime, the problem of girls getting pregnant, the STDs, right down to the low-level abuse that you get from kids who have been drinking - that's the area that we are trying to work in.

CT: Is the situation getting worse or is it simply that the media has spotlighted something?

GR: There are so many things to spotlight. The latest Government youth strategy called 'Aiming high for young people' has good news and bad news in it. You could say it's good news that only 26 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds have used illegal drugs whereas a few years ago it was 30 per cent. It's bad news in the sense that on a European level, we top every bad league table that there is for bad things, whether it's sexually transmitted diseases, binge drinking or drug use.

It's a patterned thing in society. There is a heck of a lot of harm going on. It's not only harm to young people. Alcohol Concern came out a few days ago to say don't forget that a lot of binge drinking is done by older people in the home who just sit and drink all day. So it is an all-age issue. We happen to specialise with young people.

So, is it getting worse? Yes it is. Are there people doing good work? Yes there are. Are there signs of hope? Absolutely, definitely. Is the church involved? Yes, but it's patchy. There's still a lot of the church that isn't involved.

One of our messages is that it's not rocket science. It's about good youth work, good parenting. You just have to find out enough about alcohol and drugs and you can contribute. It's important that youth workers know enough to do something. Our agency is a classic 'train the trainers', because youth workers can't be specialists in everything, and ministers cant be specialists in everything.

CT: Is there a spiritual aspect to the training?

GR: If we are working with Christians, then going back to the basic principles of health promotion, we will point out that it is good to look after your body because you are part of God's creation, that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. And that is really good to help people. Jesus went around healing people.

But it is also about example, and Paul writes about not doing things that will cause other people to stumble. All 165 of our drug educators are Christians but they are all people who have decided not to drink alcohol, smoke tobacco or use illegal drugs at all. And the reason is because that is a really positive example for other people to follow. It shows people that it is possible for them not to drink. When you are talking with young people sometimes you get the feeling of 'everybody does it so why not me'.

CT: It is engrained in young people that they should be drinking alcohol then?

GR: Oh yes. It is part of society now. If you talk to any student going to university, Freshers' Week is full of drinking opportunities. It always was, but it is now so much part of the culture. And it is the same culture that says going out on Friday and Saturday or Sunday night and getting hammered - what we have called 'binge drinking' - is acceptable and a good part of life. It is the same part of the culture that lines up shots on a bar and says 'how many can you drink quickly?'

So I think being a young person today and saying no thank you - unless they have a good reason like driving - is really, incredibly difficult. And it needs people around to offer an alternative. Our educators find that the people they meet may not stop drinking themselves but they may think 'well, it's ok for me to avoid drinking on occasion'.

Most of the people we train are adults. And an adult will send out a very strong role model. Research shows that teenagers take a lot of notice of their parents, even if they pretend not to. They take notice of what adults do, and if adults are choosing not to take alcohol on occasion then that message will get through.

In terms of our drug education work, peer influence and role modelling are absolutely critical. And that is part of Christianity. Christianity is about spreading the word as much by your behaviour and actions as by what you say. And there are parallels with relationships and sex education. We don't have a silver ring for people to wear! But it's the same sort of thing.

CT: What kind of reaction do you get from young people when they realise it's ok not to drink?

GR: We get as many different reactions as there are young people and often you won't get a reaction cos it's not cool to say 'oh I don't drink'! This is a long-term process. The important thing is that drug education isn't something that is done in the 45-minute session in the youth group and then forgotten about.

As part of our Thirst for Life initiative, we invite people to give up alcohol for Lent and we have had so many emails back in the first week saying it was really tough and they weren't expecting that. We're not talking about people here who are into binge drinking but rather people who are into social drinking. People like that found it really difficult and found that the drinking controlled them more than they were able to control their drinking.

I mean, we've got to get away from the miserable killjoy image. But if you have got someone who is really enjoying life and saying 'I don't need alcohol to do so', then that's going to influence people around them and might even bring out the question of why you even need a drink to enjoy life.

And the answer might be 'because I like the taste', but if the answer is 'because I like the effect' or 'it helps me to chat up a potential girlfriend' - I'm thinking from a young person's perspective, but it might be an older person as well because they get shy - then the question is, is there anything else that may help in those sorts of situations to give people confidence in themselves? Why do you need false confidence? And it is false confidence because all the alcohol does is slow down the way the brain works so that you can feel more confident even if you sound more stupid!

CT: So you would like to see a greater focus on the root causes behind drinking alcohol?

GR: Yes. I would like to get people thinking and more people realising that the alcohol issue is our biggest drug problem, because socially it's the one that reaches into most families and is related to most harm; because although tobacco kills more, alcohol is related to more social harm like crime and so on.

It is also the drug that is most used by Christians, because you don't get too many Christians going around smoking heroine or cannabis! And a lot of Christians don't smoke tobacco now. But alcohol is one that seems to have passed the church by.

All of our trainers have thought it through and have thought 'if we're going to do drugs education and encourage people seriously enough to make them think do they need to take drugs, then we've got to model the alcohol free option'.

Is it getting worse? It is a yes and no question. There are people who are working hard to stop it getting worse. But if you look over the last ten years, we are drinking more in this country, we are using more drugs, smoking is not decreasing as the Government hoped it would. But I would want to qualify that by saying that prevention done well does work.

The situation is bad enough that, like 150 years ago, Christians decided it was important enough to stop drinking to show just how important it was to get this message out. I think we are at that time again where we need people to say 'I'm not going to use it'.

It's like the Silver Ring Thing. Whether or not it was a good idea that she took her school to court, the reason for wearing the silver ring was to show that she was making a stand against something that was causing significant problems.

So I would say that actually alcohol and illegal drugs and tobacco are causing problems of epidemic proportions and something needs to be done at a level that people notice. If your best friend came back and said that he wasn't going to drink, even if it was only for Lent, you would take notice.

CT: Is this a problem affecting young Christians as well?

GR: The only survey done on young Christians that I know of was done in the Nineties at Spring Harvest. It would be really great if someone else did another survey because then we could find out! But what it found out then was that the young people that went to Spring Harvest - not all Christians because they might have just been part of a youth group - used substances at the same rate as young people in general use surveys.

The exception to that were those who demonstrated their Christianity by either regular prayer, or Bible study or by reading the Bible. The ticked boxes in the survey showed a correlation between those who practise their faith and being less at risk because they use substances less. So I think it's fair to say that if you've got Christians who are actively living out their faith, then they are less likely to be at risk.

In the Government strategy it actually says that regular church attendance has been shown to help people make more of their lives and get better exam results. So the Government is acknowledging that.

But drug issues are one way in which churches can build bridges with their communities. They can run parents' courses. We share in the 'Drug Proof Your Kids' programme that Care for the Family does. And that's a really good example of the way that the church can build a bridge into the community and run something for parents that parents will appreciate. And although it's not evangelistic, it is Christians actually being seen to do good and that by definition has got to have its evangelistic implications.

The church is brilliantly placed to do that kind of work, stuck in the middle of their communities. And becoming more aware does make a difference.

CT: Why is it getting worse?

GR: Money, because people want to make a profit out of what they sell; the actual alcohol effect, because it is a drug that slows the brain down so that you feel good as you drink it; fashion; a lack of adult example. And I don't mean the preaching, 'don't do it' example but the role modelling.

People like drinking and people who drink will say a glass of wine with their meal is wonderful and I'm not debating that because that's true. It's not all about addiction because addiction is only the tip of the iceberg. Most of the problems are with people who aren't dependent. The price of alcohol has also come down and if the price falls then the problems rise because more gets consumed.

I think alcohol has become a bit of a hidden thing, particularly in the church it's not an issue people want to talk about much. And even if you recognise it as an issue, people who do drink, even if it's only moderately, will find it hard to do alcohol education because they then get stuck with the question 'well if its this bad why do you drink?'

So it's not only one reason here, but there is a whole mix of reasons. And there is no quick fix. Society has to change the way it works with this one. But it's done it before. It did it in Victorian times. And the only way it did it then, was the way we did it now with smoking. We used to have a lot more people smoking in the last century but then we started getting more people encouraging other people and that's the way it works. It is people-to-people that counts.





CT: So the church needs to provide an alternative?

GR: Yes, but the alternative is not an alcohol-free bar for young people. The alternative is lifestyle. And everything I'm saying, if you took out the words 'drug' or 'alcohol' or 'tobacco' you could apply it to all sorts of other things. This is about the Christian lifestyle.


CT: What strategy do you want to see from the Government?

GR: I want to see the Government put more money into training people to do prevention work. At the moment, money goes in for targeted courses, working with people who are NEET - Not in Education, Employment or Training - or targeting people who are heroine users because heroine use is linked to a lot of crime. They don't put a lot of money into universal drug education.

CT: And in terms of Hope UK, you are working together with Pilotlight on your long-term strategy.

GR: Yes, we want to go from 165 drug educators to 800 and we want to do it over a three-year period. And that is so that we can fulfil the vision, which is to enable more young people to make drug-free choices. We also want to train more people in their own organisations. The policy will be officially launched in November.

CT: If you had a message for a young person struggling with drug dependency reading this interview, what would you say to them?

GR: Drug use isn't inevitable - that's the first thing. And not only is it possible to live life to the full, you living that full life does make a huge contribution to the health of those around you. Your life affects other people and what you do counts. In a nutshell, actions speak louder than words and in terms of the role of young Christians, they need to be models in all respects.

If anyone has a problem, find someone to help and share it with. You are not alone. There are a lot of people out there. We can advise people about that.






End of interview