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Just how closely linked are drug misuse and acquisitive crime statistics? ‘Drinking sensibly, never doing drugs – is this the age of the young puritan?’ asked the Guardian last month. ‘Why drugs are no longer cool: teenagers are internet addicts while their parents snort cocaine,’ offered the Telegraph. The Health and Social Care Information Centre’s […]

Bristol City Council has issued a safety warning after ‘an unusually high number of serious, heroin-related health incidents’. Six people have died and ‘many more’ have needed emergency care, it states, with early indications that the incidents relate to a ‘dangerous batch of heroin’ in circulation. ‘This alert is being issued because there is a […]

Drug-related deaths: Like so many others, Darren’s death was preventable, says Dr Chris Ford. I still cry when I think of Darren months after his death. He was young and had done well in treatment – I felt I must discover why he had died, as so many others die, and drug-related deaths in the […]

The speakers and workshops at Families First 2013 gave delegates an opportunity to hear personal stories, network and exchange vital expertise. Supporting role Kate McKenzie speaks of the seismic effect of her daughter’s addiction Hannah’s struggle to overcome her drug addiction has been a very testing time – often heartbreaking, frequently frustrating and even at […]

In the real world, methadone provision too often means diversion, using on top – and humiliating supervised consumption.

The number of young adults entering treatment for heroin or crack is at its lowest recorded level, according to figures released by the NTA. There was a 23 per cent fall in the number of 18 to 24-year-olds seeking treatment for heroin in the last year alone, to just over 4,000, says Drug treatment 2012: […]

Durham Constabulary is planning to become the first police force in England to offer heroin-assisted treatment to problem drug users. Under the proposals, people whose drug use had led to prolific offending would be able to follow a programme designed to ‘stabilise their addiction in a controlled environment’ and reduce their dependency until they stopped […]

Fewer young people than ever are entering treatment for heroin and crack problems, and more people of all ages are successfully completing their treatment, says the NTA. What’s behind the trends, and can they be maintained? DDN reports Figures released by the NTA last month (see news story, page 5) show that the number of […]

Kill or cure? Is it time for us to reappraise our relationship with the ‘life-saving’ drug methadone? Dave Marteau discusses the evidence Since the early 1970s, methadone has been the predominant opioid prescribed in the UK for the ongoing treatment of heroin addiction. It has proved extremely useful in the fight to contain HIV among […]

Claire Gilbert, Tony Margetts, Gilda Nunez, Bryony Sedgwick and Tim Allison describe their response to the emergence of fentanyl and carfentanil in their local area. Hull and the East Riding have been at the centre of a cluster of drug-related deaths from the end of 2016 to the end of May 2017 that appear to […]

Europe could be moving into a ‘new era’ in which heroin will play a ‘less central role’ in the continent’s drug problem, according the annual report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), while the stimulants market becomes ever more complex and volatile. ‘New recruitment’ into heroin is falling, along with […]

A pilot heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) programme is being launched in Middlesbrough, the local police and crime commissioner (PCC) has announced. The programme will concentrate on up to 15 of the most ‘at risk’ people with entrenched drug problems.  Participants will visit a clinic twice a day where diamorphine will be administered under supervision. The aim […]

The Staying Safe study is a hepatitis C prevention project with a difference. Instead of focusing on risk practices and transmission events, such as the sharing of needles and syringes, we were interested in how protective practices arose and were maintained over time. Here, people who had been injecting for the long term and who […]

DDN Magazine October 2023 - Our cover story explores moral injury – which traces a clear path from combat-related experiences to escaping trauma through substances. Other articles cover: a whole school approach to young peoples’ services, Recovery Month activities, recovery protection, The founder of Recoverist Month, 20 years of Kaleidoscope's harm reduction in the community and much more..

This series of three articles series examining the past, present and future of buprenorphine in the treatment of opioid dependence ran in DDN Magazine. They are all available below. Skip to part one ‘Filling the prescription’  The surge of buprenorphine prescribing during the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a reflection of its journey, and with the recent […]

Illegal drug use among secondary school pupils remains significantly lower than a decade ago, according to new figures from the government’s Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). Sixteen per cent of pupils had ever taken drugs, 11 per cent had taken them in the last year and 6 per cent in the last month, […]

If treatment is to survive it needs to make a more convincing case and reach out to new groups, argues Paul North. Seven years ago I, along with several hundred drug treatment workers, sat at CRI’s (now CGL) annual conference and listened to the opening speech by CEO David Royce. The mood was positive. Money […]

Forcing stable people off their heroin scripts and into chaos is evidence of a British drug treatment system in terminal decline, says Erin O’Mara ‘I feel like they are waiting for the last handful of us to die off and that will be the end of heroin prescribing in Britain, as we know it’, I […]

Public Health England (PHE) has urged people who use drugs to be ‘extra cautious’ following a spate of overdoses in a number of areas. There have now been at least 46 poisonings, 16 of them fatal, in areas including London, the South East, South West and East of England, PHE states.   While early signs indicate […]

[imagebrowser id=4] As a well-travelled photographer, Andrew McNeill was used to seeing scenes of despair. But when he set out to photograph people affected by addiction in his home town of Cardiff, nothing prepared him for the scale and impact of the deprivation on his doorstep I had no idea just how bad the heroin […]

Heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine and MDMA are now being sold at ‘unprecedented’ levels of purity, according to the latest DrugWise survey of the UK’s street drugs market. This confirms a trend of rising purity levels detected since 2014, says Highways and buyways: a snapshot of UK drug scenes 2016, which is based on interviews with […]

‘One of the questions I often get asked is why Middlesbrough, and why now?’ said Daniel Ahmed,clinical partner at specialist GP practice Foundations and...

One of the key figures in the story of drug treatment in England, ex-NTA head Paul Hayes talks to David Gilliver for DDN’s tenth anniversary issue.  Paul Hayes was chief executive of the NTA from its inception in 2001 until the agency’s functions were taken over by Public Health England last year. He now works with a […]