Wednesday/07/May 2008
The lunacy that has been demonstrated this morning with regard to the classification of cannabis has clearly come about as a result of a real change in what we now view as the purpose of drug strategy in the UK.
Whereas once - back at the time of the 1995, 1998 and even 2002 drug strategies - the aim of strategy was clearly to pragmatically tackle the harms related to drug use, it is now the clear intention of this government, led in this respect by Jacqui Smith and Gordon Brown, to turn the clock back to a time when all you had to do was say "No Sir-ee", make sure you locked the bad guys up and everything would be fine and dandy.
Read More...Tags: Cannabis, Misuse of Drugs Act, acmd, Drug Policy
Monday/28/Apr 2008
The Department of Health Reducing Drug Related Harm Action Plan is coming up to its first birthday in a couple of weeks.
How much have we achieved since its publication and what can that tell us about the state of harm reduction in the UK?
Read More...Tags: Harm Reduction, Treatment, Drug Strategy, CSR, HIV, Drug Related Death, Blood Borne Viruses, Tackling Drugs
Friday/18/Apr 2008
"Of course the general public do not currently on the whole understand that maintenance is a positive intervention and of course they think the ideal is getting people off drugs and away from addiction altogether. That’s because largely we don’t ever bother explaining it."
I've just taken part in the Drugscope and Conference Consortium Great Debate looking at the issues around the resurgence of the abstinence vs maintenance arguments.
You can download Mike Ashton's article, 'The new abstentionists', here.
A number of people have asked for a copy of my speech, so I’m blogging it for them and anyone else who's interested.
Comments below or email me using the "get in touch link" on the main page.
Read More...Tags: Treatment, New abstentionists
Wednesday/27/Feb 2008
The new drug strategy has been published today.
Its a mixed bag with some great new focus on reintegration and mainstreaming, but also a worrying lack of detail about harm reduction, drug related deaths and blood born viruses. More than a touch of the manse maybe in the emphasis on drug free communities ....?
Read More...Tags: New Drug strategy, Home Office, uk drug policy, reintegration
Monday/25/Feb 2008
The new drug strategy comes out on Wednesday - but how different will it be to the old one - and what will the reaction be across the field?
In truth, it may be less important what the strategy says than how we react to it. The time has come for a new approach - one that is not just about getting more and more money, but about prudence, co-operation and critique -
Read More...Tags: New Drugs Strategy, Drug Policy, Home Office
Saturday/02/Feb 2008
Strong signals about reclassification may be morally reassuring, may improve Britain's reputation with those international bodies for whom the continuance of the war on drugs is a priority, may even convince people who'd already decided not to use cannabis that they were right in their decision, but will it stop people using the drug? Will it reduce the potential and actual harms of cannabis? Will it make it easier for us to deal with? Probably not. Read More...Tags: Cannabis, Drug Policy, acmd, Misuse of Drugs Act
Saturday/12/Jan 2008
The announcement of a reduced Pooled Treatment Budget and a new formula for allocation that sees some areas lose millions of pounds over the next three years has upset many in the English drugs field.
But why has the allocations system changed, what information are they using to work out what different areas get and what's it going to mean for services, service users and communities?
Read More...Tags: Drug Treatment, Pooled Treatment Budget, Spending Cuts, Drug Treatment, NTA
Friday/04/Jan 2008
Part two of the best and worst of 2007 - including the National Drug Strategy Consultation, The Big Book of Drug Policy from the Conservatives, The Little Book of Legalisation from Transform Drug Policy Foundation and THAT Today programme interview ... Read More...Tags: DaTs, Drug Policy, National Drug Strategy, Annual Review, DIP, NTA, Home Office, Today programme, Poverty and Exclusion
Saturday/29/Dec 2007
Part one of a review of the high - and low - lights of the past year. Including the Pooled Treatment Budget increase that wasn't, capital investment in tier 4, the Harm Reduction Action Plan and the Drug Strategy Consultation plus much much more ribald and unbuttoned fun from the wacky world of drug policy .... part two next week.
(Thanks to The Daily Dose and Drink and Drugs News for their impeccably kept online archives - without them I would have had to make it all up ... then again, you couldn't really could you?)
Read More...Tags: DaTs, Drug Policy, National Drug Strategy, Alcohol, TOPs, DIP, NTA, Home Office
Wednesday/12/Dec 2007
A new agreement that devolves power away from Whitehall down to Local Partnerships is going to make a huge difference to the way government works. But why has the Drug Strategy been left out of this important piece of work and what have the people in Government who are meant to promote joined up solutions to drug problems been doing about it? Read More...Tags: Concordat, DaTs, LAA, 198, LGA, CLG
Wednesday/28/Nov 2007
Last week on the last day of the ACPO conference, the Home Office released 8 separate research briefings covering drug issues. Below is an overview of some of the key points plus links to more commentary from others where I've found it. These are just my initial pick-ups on a first quick read of the reports. I'll have missed loads of interesting stuff I imagine, so if what I've grabbed whets your appetite, I've put links in to all the full documents. Read More...Tags: DIP, arrestees survey, prevalence, evaluation, "Tough Choices", blueprint, Drug Harm Index, Fun With Numbers
Thursday/22/Nov 2007
More on those pesky Local Government Indicators for those of you for whom the anorak is just a second skin...
To remind you, these are the indicators that will sit at the heart of the LAA, the CAA and the SCS (That's the Local Area Agreement, The Sustainable Communities Strategy and the Comprehensive Area Assessment - the divine troika of local partnership planning, measurement and delivery). Read More...Tags: LAA, Indicators , Consultation, public Administration, Drug Policy, Local Government, Public Adminsitration, Drug Policy, 198
Friday/16/Nov 2007
There's a conference being advertised at the moment looking at Complex Needs in Drugs and Alcohol. Complex needs, the organisers tell us, are the needs of a someone in treatment to have access to employment, housing, or healthcare and they'll be a key focus for drug and alcohol providers in the next drug strategy.
This is not a definition of complex needs that I've ever heard before. Most usually "Complex Needs" refers to people with multiple disabilities or a profound depth of need relating to a primary condition. While I am willing to accept that someone who uses drugs may have more difficulty in accessing housing or employment or primary healthcare than someone who doesn't use drugs I don't think that this means that their need for housing or employment or primary healthcare is complex. Surely housing and employment and healthcare are basic needs that mainstream services should be capable of satisfying? Read More...Tags: Complex Needs, Service access, exclusion, employment, primary healthcare, reintegration
Friday/16/Nov 2007
I was in the dog park yesterday with a woman who I’d not met before who had a young staff called Boris. As Boris repeatedly and enthusiastically tried to convince my dog of the advantages of male only friendships – with some success - she explained to me that Boris was “a nightmare” and that she was trying to get her vet to give him “something like Ritalin” as that had done wonders with her son. I asked how old her son was – she said he was 18 now and doing well. He’d had some problems with drugs last year but that was all over now and he was in college doing GCSEs.
This made me think about our desperate search for a psychopharmacological solution to everything. While not for one minute disputing that some parent have great difficulties with some children (maybe that should read ‘most’ and ‘most’!), and that some children experience distress and unhappiness as a result of behaviours and symptoms that we now attribute to the somewhat subjective diagnosis of ADHD, I think as the BBC Panorama programme this week pointed out, we may be getting this out of proportion. Read More...Tags: big pharma, CAMHS, Mental Health