I was sent a press release last week suggesting that in a survey of more than 600 UK parents, 46% cited drugs as their number one parenting fear. I don't know how representative this survey is, but I have not spent a single moment worrying about my children taking drugs (the eldest are 18 and 20). I would rather they didn't, but I suspect this has more to do with my sense of wishing to maintain an aura of innocence around them than any rational argument.

During my own teenage years, I sought out and consumed all the soft drugs I could. I also smoked 20 cigarettes a day and spent a lot of time pissed. And I took LSD, which was wonderful and terrible and gave me mental-health problems later in life. Everything else I long ago left behind me, although I do still smoke occasionally.

I am aware that things have changed since I was a teenager. Legal highs represent a whole new arena of which I know nothing. New strains of skunk are much more powerful than anything in the 70s. Skunk can damage the development of young brains. Ecstasy is still out there, presumably along with cocaine, ketamine, heroin and God knows what else.

But I still don't worry about it. I would rather my elder daughters tried a well-sourced MDMA tablet than started smoking, as smoking is far more of a long-term risk. What worries me is not so much illegal drugs, which, apart from heroin and crack cocaine, seem to cause a relatively low level of harm compared with cigarettes and alcohol. What worries me is addiction.

You can be addicted to many things – order, purity, exercise, fasting, even water. You can be addicted to love, and to rejection. You may also be addicted to drugs, but in most cases it isn't the drugs that are doing it, but some inner void that needs to be filled.

My power, so far as it goes, is to try to stop my children suffering that inner void – which I have tried to do by giving them unconditional love and support and a sense of security. If you raise a well-balanced teenager, I think it is highly unlikely that they will end up on the street begging cash for another hit of crack.

There are a lot of teenagers, of course, who are not well-balanced, and who also live in an unbalanced environment, in which drugs and cheap, strong alcoholic drinks are consumed as part of everyday life. That, I think, is something to worry about – but isn't it strange that the real neurotics about illegal drugs are often well-heeled middle Englanders who read the Daily Mail and knock back a bottle of claret in the evening?

Of course, there are dangers in the drugs themselves. Heroin is physically addictive, as is cocaine and crack, but there are strong taboos in place against crack and needles (unlike some adults, teenagers don't see drugs as all the same). Cocaine, though often seen as glamorous rather than sleazy, is probably just too expensive, adulterated and hard to obtain for a teenager to get really hooked on.

The real threat is the societally approved drugs. Nicotine is horribly addictive and alcohol is horribly destructive. Maybe my children will become drinkers or smokers. If they do, there is little I can do – any more than I can stop them taking drugs.

All I can do is give them the facts and let them make up their own minds. Drugs, legal and illegal, are sometimes dangerous and sometimes addictive. But they aren't going away, and we need to talk to children as adults about them, because if we tell them lies – for instance, that a joint will inevitably lead to heroin addiction – then they will not trust us and will ignore our advice. So tell your children the truth about drugs – and love them, and hope for the best. It's all you can do.

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