Health promotion officer for drugs Luke Shobbrook has compiled a 112-page booklet to help parents.
It is available free from the department, who have posted 150 copies out to various agencies, doctors’ surgeries and the parish halls to help parents stay better informed.
A 2002 survey showed that a third of young people in Jersey had tried an illegal drug – mostly cannabis – by the time they were 15, and Mr Shobbrook said that parents and carers had an important role to play in drugs education, alongside the formal education offered in school.
He said: ‘Parents are in the front line for a lot of these issues affecting their children.
The difficulty with schools is that their approach is timetabled, so it is difficult to deliver support when it is most needed.
That’s where parents and carers come in.’ Mr Shobbrook said that some parents needed the latest advice or their experience with drug issues could be limited.
Drug education, he added, had now moved beyond ‘Just Say No’ and acknowledged that drug abuse was an issue that affected young people.
