Aiming to reduce the harm that drugs cause to society, communities, individuals and their families - the Drug Strategy has four main elements:

• Young people - preventing today's young people from becoming tomorrow's problematic drug users;

• Reducing supply - reducing the supply of illegal drugs;

• Communities - reducing drug-related crime and its impact on communities;

• Treatment and harm minimisation - reducing drug use and drug-related offending through treatment and support. Reducing drug-related death through harm minimisation.

The problems of drug misuse are complex and require many different services to work together to address them. To find out more on who these services are, please click here.

For more in depth information about the National Drugs Strategy visit the Government's Tackling Drugs website - www.drugs.gov.uk.

This excerpt from Tackling Drugs is Crown Copyright