FRANK

Services

As of November 2026 FRANK offers a confidential telephone line (0300 123 6600), open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with interpreters in 120 languages and a textphone (0300 123 1099) for people with hearing impairments; a text message service (82111); and email. Its website has information on individual drugs and on mixing them, advice for people worried about a friend or a child, and a directory of local treatment and support centres.

History

FRANK replaced the National Drugs Helpline. The advertising agency Mother created the FRANK character and its early television campaigns, built around the line "Drugs are illegal. Talking about them isn't, so talk to FRANK." Its best-known advert, Pablo the Drug Mule Dog (2008), was voiced by David Mitchell.

Advertising stopped under the government's 2010 spending freeze and resumed in October 2011. For the service's tenth anniversary in January 2013 the Home Office launched new adverts and an online live chat. Responsibility for FRANK passed from the Home Office to Public Health England in 2013. The website was updated in 2018 with new content, including information on mixing drugs.

In 2023 Huck magazine reported that the service had run no campaigns since 2013, that its website was run by Cxpartners and its call centre by Serco Group, and that page views of the website had fallen from 20.1 million in 2015 to 8 million in 2022.

Evaluation

A 2017 Home Office evaluation of the government's 2010 drug strategy found that, after a 2014/15 campaign on new psychoactive substances that pointed young people to FRANK, 34 per cent of 15- to 18-year-olds who visited the website and answered a survey said they were less likely to take so-called "legal highs" and 22 per cent said they were more likely. The evaluation said there was not enough evidence to judge whether the government's drug media campaigns were good value for money.