Holistic schemes needed to tackle dealing

02 July 2010
Effectively tackling the UK’s drug problem will require not only an increase in service provision for the families of drug users but schemes ‘directed at tackling drug dealing in a holistic way’, according to a new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). 
These initiatives would attempt to involve local communities in ‘creating circumstances within which drug-selling activities can be separated off from their local community’ or look at ways of providing sources of legitimate income for dealers, according to Drugs research: an overview of evidence and questions for policy.

The report also explores issues like consumption rooms, heroin prescription and the policing of drug possession. However, one of its authors, professor of drug misuse research at the University of Glasgow, Neil McKeganey, has issued a statement accusing sections of the media of ‘misleading’ reporting, following stories claiming he believed drugs and drug dealing could have ‘a number of positive impacts on communities’. ‘If we are to understand the impact of drug dealing on communities it is important that the media and others do not demand of researchers that they only report those findings which dovetail with their preferred views,’ reads the statement. ‘To do that would be to profoundly weaken the capacity of science to deepen our understanding of these and other social problems.’

Meanwhile, Home Office officials inadvertently sent an internal memo to the BBC which discusses withholding a report on the UK drugs strategy requested by Transform, because of fears of bad publicity. It took the organisation two years to obtain the Drugs value for money review under the Freedom of Information Act despite guidelines stating that FOI requests should be handled without taking into account who has made them. Transform has said it will make an official complaint. ‘If we are to shift towards a more effective drug policy this culture of secrecy and suppression of evidence must end,’ it says.

JRF report available at www.jrf.org.uk
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