DDN welcomes your letters.
Please email the editor or post them to DDN, CJ Wellings Ltd, Romney House, School Road, Ashford, Kent TN27 0LT. Letters may be edited for space or clarity.
Unwanted interventions
I very much enjoyed Mike Ashton’s look at the chequered history of alcohol brief interventions (DDN, March, page 22). My gut feeling has always been that they’re at best useless, and at worst potentially counter-productive and – while I realise the jury is still out – it’s nice to get even a tiny bit of academic back-up for that. And surely, they’re also at odds with much of the current direction of thought around drug use, as espoused by more and more police and crime commissioners – that it’s best to turn a blind eye to the ‘recreational’ and focus instead on the genuinely problematic.
James Burton, by email
Hobson’s choice
‘Find out who your local commissioner is, and let’s bring some new thinking in,’ advises Paul Musgrave in your conference reports (DDN, March, page 12). Well I’ve known who my commissioner is for quite a while. The problem is he doesn’t know who I am, nor does he seem to have the slightest interest in finding out, let alone listening to anything I might have to say. I realise my experience may not be all that representative, but somehow I doubt it. ‘It’s all about choice,’ he says earlier in the article. Fine, but whose choice exactly?
Name and address supplied
More comment can be seen under the relevant feature articles on this website. You can leave your own feedback and opinions at the foot of each article.