EVERY time Dougie McClounie opens his box of drugs it causes a stir. Behind three plastic panels lie an array of illegal substances, from cannabis to heroin via poppers and ecstasy. The teenagers he is here to see descend on the box like a flock of seagulls. "I've seen that, and that, " they say pointing at the drugs as you would towards a deck of top trump cards. "I've tried that. I would never try that! Oooh, what's that?" Don't worry ­ thinks aren't quite what they seem. The drugs are fake and Dougie isn't a dealer; he's Strathclyde Police's drugs awareness officer. His job involves travelling to schools and youth groups telling teenagers about drugs and their consequences, both legally and to your body.

"To deter young people you have to give them as much information as possible, " he says. "We say, if you take this, this is what it will do to you.

People take drugs because they thoroughly enjoy the effects, but it can lead to big bother in their lives and it can kill them." Dougie and his props have been on the road for a year now. Previously drugs education just used pictures to tell people about the substances. But the box of drugs has changed things.

On the first day at a Strathclyde University health fair a year ago all Dougie had was leaflets. "A few people stopped for a chat and that was it, " he recalls. So he brought the box along the next day. "And it was like chalk and cheese. It was swamped. Because people could actually see what they looked like.

I even had some staff come too." Today Dougie is at Rathbone, a centre in Glasgow that prepares young people for the world of work.

Connor is 17 and has been coming to Rathbone for a month. He hopes to eventually get a work placement.

He enjoys Dougie's visits as drugs are an issue that affects all teenagers.

"They've shown us the damaging effects of what happens ­ it's bad, man, " he says. "I know some things about drugs but I want to learn more. I think a lot of teenagers don't know what they are getting into." Connor's attitude is quite rare.

Dougie says from his experience there's a huge gulf between what even the most savvy teenager thinks they know about drugs and the reality. The biggest misconception is about cannabis.

"They think cannabis is okay as long as it's for 'personal use'." Not so says Dougie. "If they are caught in possession of cannabis and found guilty the maximum penalty could be two years in jail and/or an unlimited fine. They've never thought about this. You can see it's like them being hit by something. They step back a bit, wait a minute." And then there is the Kate Moss effect. The super model's cocaine snorting and spells in rehab might have provoked shock headlines in the news but Dougie says it also gave a lot of young people wrong ideas.

"She suddenly goes away to America to go into rehab, which costs thousands of pounds, and a lot of the young people I speak to think they can do that. They believe they can use cocaine until it becomes a problem and then they'll just go and speak to their doctor. But that would be months down the line before you get to rehab because they don't have the places." And if Kate is blazing a trail of misconceptions, her on/off boyfriend Pete Doherty isn't far behind. The Babyshambles singer's struggles with drug addiction have been well documented, but Dougie believes a lot of teenagers are picking up the wrong idea of how the law works.

"They see people like Pete Doherty who keeps on getting arrested for drugs, goes to court and walks out.

Again they just think, well if he can do it, I can do it." Several of the teenagers today readily admit they take drugs.

Cannabis is by far the most popular but everybody has an open disdain for anyone who takes heroin or crack.

"You'd just turn into a mad junkie and rob people to get more junk, " says one. Another who says he finds out about most drugs by trying them says: "If any of my friends were going to do something like crack I'd grab it off them and get rid of it to stop them from using it." Dougie hates the word 'junkie'.

He also dislikes how inconsistent most teenagers' attitudes are towards drugs.

"If you use drugs you are a drug user, " he says. "If you use cannabis you are using a controlled drug and an illegal drug, in the same way if you use heroin you are using a controlled drug and an illegal drug." At the end of the session Dougie packs up his box and gets ready to move on to his next classroom.

Recently he has started visiting primary schools. "The teacher would say their class are very naive, " he says. "But when you talk to the primary class they rattle off names of drugs and the teacher's mouth just drops open. It's quite scary actually. I still get shocked."