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The DDN letters and comments page, where you can have your say about the drug and alcohol sector. To be included in the next magazine, send your letters and comments to claire@cjwellings.com or to 57 High Street, Ashford, Kent TN24 8SG. Letters may be edited for space or clarity – please limit submissions to 350 […]

The Forward Trust has been awarded two major new contracts, enabling the organisation to help even more people change their lives for the better. Southend Treatment and Recovery Service The Southend Treatment and Recovery Service went live on 1st April and is delivered alongside our partners Open Road. The service helps people 18+ that have […]

The government’s long-awaited drug strategy has finally been published, and includes both a new ‘national recovery champion’ role and a cross-government drug strategy board to be chaired by the home secretary, Amber Rudd. The UK will ‘drive global action and enhance its leadership in the international response to drugs’, the government states. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there […]

Media savvy The news and views from the national media Laws against smoking have irreversibly shifted attitudes. The same drive is needed for alcohol consumption. The police, magistrates and judges must insist on rehab for alcoholics as they do for drug addiction. And finally, while the NHS must care for those already addicted, it needs […]

Cooking pizza saved Tom Gozney from oblivion, and gave him the impetus to turn his life around. I turned to alcohol and drugs when I was young, lost and struggling to understand myself and where I fitted in in the world. In my early years I was always a timid, sensitive kid and then when […]

Introducing a legalised, regulated cannabis market in the UK would generate ‘at least £1bn in tax income, if not more’, according to a report from the Health Poverty Action NGO. The money could then be ring-fenced to support the NHS as well as education and harm reduction programmes, it says. With the Canadian senate about […]

We are failing to reach women, connect with them and provide a safe environment in treatment, hears DDN. Read the full article in DDN here Drug-related deaths among women are the highest since records began. In the decade since 2006 there was a 95 per cent increase in women dying as a result of drug […]

The DDN letters page, where you can have your say. To be included in the next magazine, send your letters and comments to claire@cjwellings.com or to 57 High Street, Ashford, Kent TN24 8SG. Letters may be edited for space or clarity – please limit submissions to 350 words.    Competent compassion I am writing in response to Chris Ford’s […]

[…] also procuring 34 Cepheid GeneXpert portable testing units – which can detect if someone is infected in less than an hour – for use in settings like prisons and GP surgeries. The expansion in testing forms part of the ‘final phase’ of England’s hepatitis C elimination programme, which could see it become the first […]

Drugs legislation is woefully out of date Fifty years on, does anybody believe that the Misuse of Drugs Act is still fit for purpose? The verdict is not good (page 6). A dramatic failure, punitive (particularly to the most vulnerable in our society), neither fair nor evidence-based, a blunt policing tool that compounds damage… some […]

[…] mainly because of county lines gangs. 2019 County lines activity is still on the up, as is crack use, and City Roads becomes the field’s latest casualty. Prisons continue to struggle with rising NPS use and Release warns that councils are providing ‘drastically insufficient’ levels of naloxone. And 12 years after the RSA’s call […]

Opening a conference about stigma, Roy Lilley began with a personal story. His dad was ‘born illegitimate’ as it was regarded back then. The status thwarted his chance to go to the Royal School of Music at the form-filling stage. He came back from WWII with shell shock and went to a mental health hospital […]

Release solicitor Kirstie Douse answers your legal questions in her regular column   Reader’s question: I am a landlord of a flat that I own and rent out, and I think the tenants may be growing cannabis.  I live in a different city so I’m not there often, but the last few times I have visited recently […]

Council call London’s drug and sexual health services are failing to respond appropriately to gay men’s drug use, according to NAT (National Aids Trust). The trust has written to councils calling for action to address a ‘recent and rapid rise’ in the use of mephedrone, crystal meth and GHB/GBL in London’s gay scene, citing high […]

As we celebrate Recovery Month, a graduation ceremony took place in Taunton, Somerset for those that have completed Turning Point’s Somerset Drug and Alcohol Service’s (SDAS) ‘Peer Mentor’ training programme. The group of graduates are all people who have successfully completed treatment through SDAS and will now be able to support others suffering with addiction. […]

Around 99 per cent of people who inject drugs live in countries that are failing to provide adequate harm reduction services, says a new report from UNAIDS. Despite overall new HIV infections declining globally, infection rates among people who use drugs remain unchanged, says Health, rights and drugs: harm reduction, decriminalisation and zero discrimination for […]

[…] how many people would turn up. But I looked forward to the day, wondering what would be said – and if I would have the courage to say or ask anything.  I was really surprised by the turnout. The people that attended obviously cared about what was going on in our criminal justice system and the fact that there were women in jail, and that maybe most them shouldn’t be.  The lady who had organised the conference came over and gave me a little slip of paper with a question on it that she would like me to read out for one of the prisoners. She  also  explained  that  the  whole  conference  was  being  recorded  for  a  BBC programme, and I tried not to panic.  The question was to panellist Eoin McLennon-Murray. It said: ‘Why does probation constantly over populate our  prisons for breeching? If circumstances were taken into consideration,  sometimes  the  reasons  should  be  valid  and  recognised.  After  all  it costs over £53,bbb to the tax player to put/keep someone in prison for a year.’ He  replied  that  he  agreed  probation  held  too  much  power  when  it  came  […]

Communities and conversation are key to making recovery a reality, delegates heard at Addaction’s annual recovery conference. Jill Stevenson reports Communities working together was a central theme of Addaction’s fourth National Recovery Conference last month. The annual get-together looked at how peer support and combined neighbourhood/group action could provide the catalyst to further recovery from […]

Drug-related deaths: A strong message from Addaction’s Mortality Matters conference was that treatment services need to put competition to one side and challenge the conditions that are allowing drug-related deaths to rise. DDN reports. How should we tackle the alarming increase in drug-related deaths head on, asked Addaction’s medical director, Dr Kostas Agath, opening the […]

UK veterans who served in military operations are likely to report a significantly higher prevalence of common mental disorders than non-veterans (23 per cent versus 16 per cent), as well as alcohol misuse (11 per cent versus 6 per cent), according to a 2020 King’s Centre for Military Health Research study Mental health disorders and […]

Public Health England (PHE) is working to produce the first UK-wide set of clinical guidelines for alcohol treatment, the agency has announced. While the UK drug misuse treatment guidelines – widely known as the ‘orange book’ – have helped to ensure good practice in drug treatment, there has so far been no equivalent for alcohol. PHE […]

A new report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy has called for an end to the criminalisation of drug use and possession. Among the recommenda­tions in Taking control: pathways to drug policies that work are that health and community safety be prioritised by ‘a fundamental reorientation’ of policy and resources away from punitive approaches, […]

 Whatever you feel about existing data collection systems – and we know that many of you feel very strongly that they have taken over your job and burrowed into client time – there is no doubt that the NTA has consulted carefully before introducing the new Treatment Outcomes Profile system (page 10). Its designers, addiction researchers Dr John Marsden and Dr Michael […]

This year’s HIT Hot Topics conference delved into neuroscience to challenge our perceptions of drugs and drug taking. Max Daly reports  The fervour around crack cocaine reached such a level of hype in the US in the 1980s, neuroscientist Dr Carl Hart told the 2014 HIT Hot Topics conference, that at one point black civil […]