DS Daily : A daily drug and alcohol news service

Public Health England has today announced the availability of £10 million of capital funding for services that are helping people in England with drug or alcohol problems to recover from their addiction. This is the third year the funding has been available, supporting the government’s focus on recovery-orientated services. Local authorities and recovery providers are invited to jointly bid for funding, following submission to PHE by the local authority. Applications are open from the 8 October until the 4 December 2015. PHE regional centres are sending out details of the application process. If you require more information please contact your PHE regional centre. Contact details are available here | PHE, UK

First Minister opening speech at the the Global Alcohol Policy Conference - video

Nicola Sturgeon opens the conference and talks about minimum unit pricing | Scottish Government, UK

'Political courage' on drink pricing policy praised

The Scottish government has been praised for its "political courage" in attempting to introduce a minimum unit price for alcohol | BBC, UK

Scots authorities 'do not understand country's high drug deaths'

Scottish authorities do not understand why the country has one of the highest drug death rates in the world despite several calls for research in recent years, government-appointed researchers have found | STV, UK

Pregnant women 'should be advised to totally avoid alcohol'

Two health experts agree that current advice for drinking during pregnancy 'flies in the face of evidence' | Independent, UK

Alcohol during pregnancy: We drank while expecting - video

There has been a lot of conflicting advice: A new report advises avoiding alcohol completely while expecting - while other research suggests that a small glass of wine every day will not cause harm | BBC, UK

6 things for the Education Select Committee to think about

The Education Select Committee of the UK House of Commons are undertaking an inquiry into the mental health and wellbeing of children in the looked after system. Here are 6 things they should know... | Andrew Brown, UK

Submission to the Public Health Outcomes Framework

Release supports the National AIDS Trust’s submission to create a new sub-indicator within the Public Health Outcomes Framework to record and monitor drug-related deaths in the United Kingdom | Release, UK

Drinks giant Heineken UK slapped by regulator for breaking advertising rules following Alcohol Concern complaint

A complaint about irresponsible alcohol advertising has been upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) following a complaint made by the Youth Alcohol Advertising Council, a group of young people working with the charity Alcohol Concern | Alcohol Concern, UK

Strongbow ad banned for suggesting that alcohol is more important than relationships

The ad was based around the idea of a spoof awards ceremony in which the winner, Carl, gave a speech after accepting an award called “best Strongbow as my other half" | Independent, UK

Clinical & Policy Updates: SMMGP News & Updates - Issue #1 (Oct 2015)

A combined update including SMMGP Clinical and Policy Updates as well as Post-Its from Practice and other sector news | SMMGP, UK

Drugs, Alcohol and Sex - survey open to individuals who live in the Angus, Dundee city or Perth & Kinross local authority areas

To ensure that our services are developed to support everyone who needs them, Terrence Higgins Trust Scotland - along with Perth & Kinross Alcohol & Drug Partnership and Angus Alcohol & Drug Partnership - has designed this questionnaire to gain a better understanding of what is happening locally around alcohol/substance use, sexual behaviour and ‘chemsex’| Terrence Higgins Trust Scotland - along with Perth & Kinross Alcohol & Drug Partnership and Angus Alcohol & Drug Partnership

How did a jail in Guernsey ban smoking with no unrest?

Ahead of the prison smoking ban in England and Wales, Guernsey’s Les Nicolles has been helping its prisoners to live without tobacco for two years | Guardian, UK

Scotland Yard plans to monitor power surges to track cannabis farms

Scotland Yard is examining plans to monitor the electricity power supply network in an effort to identify the location of industrial cannabis farms | Evening Standard, UK

Alone in Alabama: dispatches from an inmate jailed for her son’s stillbirth

On 29 April last year Amanda Kimbrough sat down in her cell inside the notoriously tough Tutwiler women’s prison in Wetumpka, Alabama, and began writing a letter in which she described her feelings of loss and remorse | Guardian, UK

Illinois high school student killed himself after being accused of smelling like marijuana, say open letter and petition

Open letter nears 500,000 views in under 24 hours, as Change.org petition gathers comments from across the world | Independent, UK

Victoria Will Be Australia's First State to Legalise Medical Weed

Honduras football boss Yankel Rosenthal charged in US

The president of one of Honduras's most famous football clubs has been charged in the United States with drug trafficking and money laundering | BBC, UK

Obesity peaks, smoking below 20% but binge drinking rife

Most commonly reported health conditions are high blood pressure and back problems | Irish Times, Ireland

Nobel Conference 51 Live

Videos from Nobel Conference 51: Addiction: Exploring the Science and Experience of an Equal Opportunity Condition, 6th/7th October| Nobel Conference, USA

Treating 5 percent of hepatitis C patients with new drugs would reduce cost and infections, study shows

The cost-benefits analysis by researchers from the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and other institutions compares three treatment options to the current approach, or "baseline" scenario, which treats patients in the most advanced stages of the disease when they may need a costly liver transplant | Medical Xpress, USA

Why a Seattle Police Program Wants to Keep Low-Level Drug Offenders Out of Jail

The United States is currently in one of the worst heroin epidemics in history. Heroin deaths have skyrocketed from 2002 to 2013, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But in Seattle, where heroin has been a problem for decades, authorities are taking a new approach with the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program | abc news, USA

Experts refute Harper’s claim pot is more dangerous than tobacco

Is cannabis, as Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper claims, “infinitely worse” than tobacco, a substance that kills tens of thousands of Canadians each year? | Globe and Mail, Canada

The Shake Shack: Stoners Explain Why They Prefer Crappy Weed

It's morning in America for potheads. More and more states are legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana, studies are finding more and more medicinal uses for it, and the quality of herb is getting stronger by the season | VICE, UK

Charities, campaigning and 'sock puppetry': why the sector has a right to speak out

On Tuesday I spoke at a fringe event called ‘Sock puppets: Should the state be funding pressure groups?’ run by the Institute of Economic Affairs. My colleague Karl Wilding recently wrote a blog post in defence of charity campaigning, in which he talks about the ‘why and how’ of charity campaigning – here, I would like to address some of the issues which arise when charities which campaign receive government funding | NCVO Blog, UK

States Continue Welfare Drug Tests Despite Underwhelming Results

This summer marked the first anniversary of Tennessee's welfare drug testing program -- and so far, the results are somewhat typical of welfare drug testing policies, in that they are kind of underwhelming | Huffington Post, USA

Of powders and pills: designing a fentanyl awareness campaign

Fentanyl-related overdoses have dominated the headlines in BC—and across the country—over the past year. Deaths involving the synthetic opiate narcotic, which is roughly 50 to 100 times more toxic than morphine, have increased five-fold in British Columbia over the past three years | Matters of Substance Blog, Canada

Daily news -8th October 2015

Public Health England (PHE) announces £10m for drug and alcohol recovery services