JANUARY
A ‘people’s panel’ set up to look into the ‘public health emergency’ of drug harms in Scotland recommends ring-fenced funding and a focus on prevention, while the country’s – and the UK’s – first consumption room finally opens in Glasgow. The government bans xylazine as a class C substance and seeks the ACMD’s advice on rescheduling ketamine to class A.
FEBRUARY
Alcohol-specific deaths in the UK hit their highest ever level, at almost 10,500, while the interim report of former justice secretary David Gauke’s sentencing review finds that capacity pressures in the prison system brought it ‘dangerously close to collapse’. The government announces that ‘cuckooing’ will become a specific criminal offence while Dame Carol Black tells DDN that ‘without doubt’ some local authorities have responded better to the challenges facing the treatment system than others. ‘Has there been enough innovation with the money, rather than just going back to “let’s employ more drug workers?” No. But I would say, overall, we’re going in the right direction and we’ve done the right things. They’re just very difficult to do.’
MARCH
There’s more stark evidence of the UK’s increasingly unpredictable drug supply when 33 people in a single London borough are taken ill after consuming what they thought was heroin, while NHS Scotland and Public Health Scotland both issue alerts about a spate of ‘sudden collapse’ overdoses – with tests revealing the presence of powerful nitazene-type opioids. Global executions for drug offences reach ‘crisis levels’ according to the latest HRI analysis, while former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is arrested and charged with crimes against humanity.
APRIL
A study by UCL and the University of Exeter finds that almost half of those affected by ketamine use disorder are not seeking treatment – with many ‘too embarrassed’ – while Adfam’s Robert Stebbings writes in DDN about the disturbing findings of research into the levels of family support across the UK. An FoI request revealed that less than half of local authorities were able to provide any data on the funding allocated to family and carer support, with the national average among those that could supply numbers standing at an ‘alarming’ 0.2 per cent of their substance misuse budgets.
MAY
New recommendations to help police and local authorities deal with the threat posed by synthetic opioids are published by the Home Office, as analysis by the Health Foundation sets out how the drug death rate is now taking its toll on UK life expectancy. Provisional figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, show that the tide might finally be turning for America’s ongoing opioid crisis – which has claimed a million lives this century – with a ‘remarkable’ 27 per cent drop in predicted deaths.
JUNE
The Loop warns about deadly nitazene pills in circulation as EUDA’s latest European drug report says almost 90 new synthetic opioids have been identified since 2009. Lisa Ogilvie tells DDN readers how to make ketamine services sensitive and responsive, and drugs campaigner Peter Krykant dies aged 48.
JULY
The long-awaited ten-year health plan for England is published, with campaigners dismayed at its lack of action to address alcohol harm. Meanwhile the Irish government delays its introduction of mandatory alcohol health labelling – signed into law in 2023 – until 2028, in what campaigners brand a ‘failure of leadership and democracy’. ASH warns of ‘soaring misconceptions’ around vaping, with 56 per cent of adults and 63 per cent of young people now wrongly believing it to be as, or more, harmful than smoking, and this year’s DDN conference sees another day of debate, networking and powerful presentations in Birmingham.
AUGUST
Public Health Scotland issues another urgent nitazenes alert, as WEDINOS says that more than 20 per cent of the samples it’s identified across Scotland were bought as oxycodone and 17 per cent as benzodiazepines.
SEPTEMBER
Deaths involving ketamine have increased twenty-fold in a decade according to new research, with the fatalities ‘increasingly occurring in complex polydrug settings’, while a disturbing report from King’s College London concludes that deaths involving opioids are more than 50 per cent higher than official figures show – the result of ONS not having access to post-mortem reports or toxicology results when classifying polydrug use deaths. In some rare good news, the goal of national IPS coverage in community drug and alcohol treatment is now ‘very close’ to being met.
OCTOBER
More bleak nitazenes news as the number of deaths involving them in England and Wales quadruples in a year, while deaths involving cocaine show their 13th consecutive increase – as the Border Force says it’s seized more of the drug in three months than in the whole of 2022-23. Meanwhile, our article on the importance of nutrition in harm reduction generates a bulging readers’ letters bag.
NOVEMBER
Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan – which had already plummeted by 95 per cent a year after the Taliban introduced its ban – falls by another 20 per cent, fuelling fears of a European drug supply dominated by easy to produce, highly potent synthetic opioids. A landmark shift in UK smoking habits sees vaping overtake cigarette use for the first time, while the House of Commons Justice Committee issues a damning report on the ‘dangerous culture of acceptance’ around ‘endemic’ drug use in prisons. Without urgent reform and investment prisons will remain ‘unstable, unsafe and incapable of gaining control over the drugs crisis’, warns committee chair Andy Slaughter MP.