DS Daily - 25th November 2011 |
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Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs Open Meeting - December 2011
The meeting is free to attend, but you must register beforehand | Home Office, UK
Hurrah for Balloons
Our blog post, Hurrah for Balloons, asks what balloon launches have to do with delivering drug and alcohol services - Dr Marcus Roberts, Director of Membership and Policy | DrugScope, UK
Anti-drug ads do not work and can be counterproductive
Governments spend millions on them and they may serve political functions, but do anti-drug media campaigns prevent drug use? This first systematic review finds no strong evidence that they do and some that they can have the opposite effect | Drug and Alcohol Findings, UK
Let’s have an honest discussion about drug use
Forty years on from Nixon declaring drugs ‘public enemy number one’ and launching what some call America’s longest-running war, could the UK be about to declare a ceasefire? | Independent, UK
Legalising the Drugs Trade: Reducing Crime or Increasing Addiction?
Background information and sources for further reading | British Library, UK
Ketamine Catches BBC Scotland's Attention
Crew stalwart and emerging trends in substance use specialist Katy MacLeod talked to Newsdrive on Radio Scotland on Wednesday about Ketamine and the increase in use reported by Druglink who published DrugScope’s 2011 Street Drug Trends Survey this month | Crew Enterprise, UK
Drug Consumption Rooms for the UK?
Neil Hunt gives a comprehensive and masterly presentation at the HIT Hot Topics seminar in Liverpool on the 17th November 2011 | You Tube
Drug Consumption Rooms - presentations
The world's first drug consumption room was opened in Berne, Switzerland in 1986. Dr Robert Haemmig and Dr Jakob Huber were among the founders. Dr Haemmig spoke about their history and rationale and Dr Huber spoke about the development-oriented approach that bridges acceptance/harm reduction perspectives and abstinence based services | Hot topics, UK
Britain's most notorious drug baron told: Stop running your £300m empire from prison
Britain's most notorious drug baron has been issued with an extraordinary warning to stop running his multi-million-pound criminal empire from behind bars | Daily Mail, UK
Small beer? assessing the Government's alcohol policies
A new Briefing Note looks at three policies in depth, using detailed data recording the off-licence alcohol purchases of more than 25,000 British households | Institute for Fiscal Studies, UK
Alcohol brief interventions: doing without the doctor
It works when the doctor does it, but what if the nurse or other primary care staff briefly counsel risky drinking patients? According to this synthesis of the research, it still works - maybe not as well, but perhaps more patients can be reached more cheaply | Drug and Alcohol Findings, UK
New NHS operating framework published
The Operating Framework for the NHS in England 2012/13 describes the national priorities, system levers and enablers needed for NHS organisations to maintain and improve the quality of services provided, while delivering transformational change and maintaining financial stability | Department of Health, UK
NHS reforms will exacerbate the postcode lottery of healthcare
In my 40-year career as a pharmacist, I don't ever recall the contrasts in health being as pronounced as they are now | Guardian, UK
Report reveals significant challenges for mental health tariff
People working in mental health throughout the NHS are enthusiastic about making payment by results (PbR) work but, as things stand, creating the first mental health tariff faces significant challenges before it can be implemented properly | NHS Confederation, UK
Squatting: new laws 'quietly introduced' through legal aid bill
Many squatters have significant welfare needs: 34% of homeless people who squat had been in care; 42% had physical ill health or a disability; 41% reported mental health problems | Guardian, UK
Why anything can be addictive
If the rewards are there people can become addicted to almost anything | BBC, UK
Statistics show large rise in alcoholic liver disease
Research conducted by Dr Deirdre Mongan HRB and Prof Aiden McCormick, St. Vincents Hospital Dublin has shown a startling increase in alcoholic liver disease (ALD) between 1995 and 2009 | Health Research Board, Ireland
Shock rise in alcohol liver disease
The mortality rate (per 100,000 population aged 15 and over) among patients treated in hospital for ALD was 2.6 in 1995 and 7.5 in 2009, an increase of 188% | Irish Health
The redlining of harm reduction programs
First came an assault on Vancouver, British Columbia’s safe injection site. That was followed by the axing of safe tattooing programs in prisons as well as opposition to needle exchange and safe sex programs. Meanwhile, federal funding for drug substitution programs has quietly dried up | Canadian Medical Association Journal
Harmful patterns of painkiller prescriptions seen among methadone patients
A new study has shown harmful prescription patterns of powerful painkillers among a substantial number of Ontario patients who received methadone therapy to treat their opioid addiction | Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada
Legalizing Marijuana
The public has waked up to the fact that we need to change our marijuana laws. Savvy politicians would do well to catch up - letter from Neill Franklin, director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition | New York Times, USA
Despite state crackdown, orders rise for hydrocodone
Prescriptions for the painkiller hydrocodone have jumped dramatically in the Houston region during the last year, despite stricter state regulations designed to curtail the flow of this addictive drug and others that have been blamed in numerous overdose deaths | Chron, USA
Mexico’s changing drug war
The drug war’s fifth year throws up new trends, for better and worse | The Economist
26 bodies dumped in mass slaying in Guadalajara
The bound and gagged bodies of 26 young men were found dumped Thursday in the heart of Mexico's second-largest city, in what experts said could mark a new stage in the full-scale war between the country's two main drug cartels, Sinaloa and the Zetas | Seattle PI, USA