Daily news -13th June 2017 |
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UK news
READ: Joint Letter to The Times Calling on Parties to Address Current Drug Policy
[On] Saturday, 3rd June, The Times published our joint letter calling on all political parties to address the problems of current drug policy in the UK, as laid out in our Manifesto Challenge | Volte Face, UK
The Inside Story of London's Chemsex Scene
Christine Schierano has been documenting the world of drug-fuelled sex parties for the past six years | VICE, UK
Prison therapeutic community no better than counselling
For the first time in a prison setting, a randomised trial has rigorously compared intensive residential therapeutic community treatment to outpatient counselling. The results of this unique trial may warrant a rethink of official US and UK guidance | Drug and Alcohol Findings, UK
Smoking in cars is banned. But children still inhale toxic fumes in backseats
Studies show pollution levels inside cars are higher than outside where NO2 emissions are dissipated into the wider atmosphere | Guardian, UK
Micro-drinking behaviours and consumption of wine in different wine glass sizes: a laboratory study
Tableware size may influence how much food and non-alcoholic drink is consumed. Preliminary evidence of the impact of glass size on purchasing of alcoholic drinks shows an increase in wine sales of almost 10% when the same portion of wine is served in a larger glass | BMC Psychology, UK
Glasgow Drug Consumption Room Can Save Lives and Money
The creation of a drug consumption room (DCR) in Glasgow, and the expansion of heroin-assisted treatment (HAT), can reduce the harms of drug use and save the city money in the long-term, according to the UK’s largest health board | Talking Drugs, UK
Women and Drugs: A Long Overdue Conference
It’s safe to say that conferences devoted to talking about women and drugs are few and far between. Not because this is a niche area, indeed, 30% of the treatment population treatment are women (an underrepresentation of women who experience addiction), and 1 in 20 women in England and Wales took illegal drugs in 2015/16 | Volte Face, UK
Building a mindful drinking movement
Report from the first year of Club Soda Guide | Club Soda, UK
What Does An Addict Look Like?
Someone face down in the gutter with a can in their hand, or a dubious looking character begging for spare change to fund the next hit. No. It’s the person who passes you in a supermarket aisle, who you chat to at the school gates, who sits opposite you on the commuter train | NHS Merseyside, UK
'Sobriety tags' trialled by Lincolnshire, Humberside and North Yorkshire police forces
Offenders who commit crimes while under the influence of alcohol could be issued with so-called sobriety tags as part of a two-year trial | BBC, UK
London Fire Brigade issues warning over skin creams deaths
"Dropping cigarettes or matches onto clothing is dangerous but when flammable creams are involved, this really increases the chance of a fire starting and becoming much more intense." | BBC, UK
Drug Use in Films
Latest podcast - So, how are drugs used in films? Is it accurate? What does a character's drug use say about their personality? Are drugs a way to speed up a story line? Should films with tobacco have an age restriction? And why do we mention so many Zac Efron films? Seriously, why? | NAC, UK
Conference: Theorising the Drug War
Free event. You are warmly invited to the conference Theorising the Drug War: Unpacking the ideologies that generated and continue to sustain the ‘war on drugs, to be held at the University of Essex on the 29th and 30th of June (2017) | Critical Legal Thinking, UK
Cambridge event: Anyone's Child could be a casualty of the war on drugs
Free event. June 22nd. Cambridge.Drugs are dangerous. Come along to our Anyone’s Child event and find out why legally regulated drugs, supplied by doctors and pharmacists, would reduce the dangers. Join us for a discussion about what a new approach to drugs could mean for Cambridge, your family and your community | Anyone's Child, UK
HIV Anti-Stigma Community Discussion
Event. We having been working with experts over the past year to develop a strategy for eliminating HIV-related stigma | HIV Scotland, UK
'Somerset agencies failed' man with brain injury
A man who suffered from a brain injury who took his own life was not provided with appropriate support, a serious case review has concluded | BBC, UK
A high-tech cannabis farm with a level of sophistication 'rarely encountered' has been unearthed by police
The Swansea property had advanced feeding, watering and drainage systems for the plants worth £23,500 - but the tenant of the flat remains at large | Wales Online, UK
Officer keeps job after drinking and driving conviction
A police officer convicted of drinking and driving has escaped dismissal at a private misconduct hearing | BBC, UK
International news
Funding for Harm Reduction under threat in Europe
Austerity, international donor retreat and poor political support are severely limiting harm reduction responses in several European Union (EU) countries | AVERT, UK
2017 Global Day of Action
26th June 2017 will be the 5th Day of Action organised so far. In 2013, 41 cities from around the world took part in the first ever Global Day of Action. In 2014, 100 cities around the world held a huge variety of different actions. In 2015, 160 cities joined forces to call for drug policy reform, and in 2016, activists in 125 cities participated | Support. Don't Punish, UK
Media Watch: Alcohol and Other Drugs
The media plays a critical role in framing the public debate on Alcohol and other Drugs (AOD). There are few other avenues ways the community access information about AOD | Volte Face, UK
Legalising marijuana will boost California's economy by $5 billion, study finds
A measure is passing through the state legislature | Independent, UK
Mothers in the drugs lab – women in Peru treating their sick children with cannabis
Peru’s president has proposed legalising medicinal marijuana after two women found that cannabis oil helped their seriously ill children | Guardian, UK
The drug addictions devastating Thai villages
Across Thailand's southern provinces, communities have been struggling with rising drug use in recent years despite crackdowns and education efforts. BBC Thai's Nanchanok Wongsamuth reports on the villages devastated by addiction | BBC, UK
Brazil police clear new 'Crackland' in Sao Paulo
Security forces in Sao Paulo have cleared a central square of crack addicts and homeless people who fled from a similar police operation nearby nearly a month ago | BBC, UK
PRESS RELEASE: Two New Studies Show Ibogaine’s Promise As Treatment for Opioid Addiction
The promising results of two observational studies into treating opioid dependence with ibogaine, a naturally occurring psychedelic compound, have been published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse | MAPS, USA
E-cigarettes less addictive than cigarettes, study shows
People who regularly use electronic cigarettes are less dependent on their product than those who regularly use traditional cigarettes, according to researchers | Science Daily, USA
Where cigarette smoking's damage is done... down to your DNA
Scientists have known for decades that smoking cigarettes causes DNA damage, which leads to lung cancer. Now, for the first time, UNC School of Medicine scientists created a method for effectively mapping that DNA damage at high resolution across the genome | Medical Xpress, USA
Fentanyl & Carfentanil: Inside the Deadly World of Synthetic Opioids
The opioid epidemic is not something tucked away in textbooks or in newspaper headlines. It’s a public health crisis spreading through Midwestern states and claiming thousands of real American lives | Huffington Post, USA
The feds are blocking a product aimed at keeping drugs out of kids’ hands
US Customs and Border Protection has seized a Colorado company's shipment of a producted intended to keep marijuana out of the hands of children | Washinton Post, USA
Heroin Use? Juvenile Record? For Recruits, Police Forgive Past Sins
Desperate to attract more applicants and meet the demands of modern policing, departments are jettisoning timeworn requirements | NYTimes, USA
When opioid addicts find an ally in blue
Across the country, police leaders are assigning themselves a big role in reversing a complex crisis, and not through mass arrests | NYTimes, USA
Ohio Proposal Would Allow Heroin Dealers To Avoid Prison
A provision in the state's budget proposal would focus its efforts on monitoring and rehabilitation | Vocativ, USA
Why We Should Say Someone Is A 'Person With An Addiction,' Not An Addict
For years, people with addiction have wondered when the media would recognize our condition as a medical problem, not a moral one — when they would stop reducing us to mere "addicts" and speak of us in the more respectful and accurate "person first" language that has become common for people with other diseases and disorders | npr, USA
Duterte, Focused on Drug Users in Philippines, Ignored Rise of ISIS
Islamist rebels threatened to burn down the city of Marawi. President Duterte said, “Go ahead, do it | NYTimes, USA
Cary Grant was one of the first to benefit from LSD therapy
Today, research on the effects of psychedelics is one of the most exciting fields of psychology | Quartz, USA
New study may pave way for treating alcohol addiction by reducing motivation to drink
A new study in Biological Psychiatry may pave the way for treating alcohol addiction by reducing motivation to drink, rather than by altering the effects of alcohol itself. Led by Drs. Kasia Radwanska and Leszek Kaczmarek of the Nencki Institute, Warsaw, Poland, the study reports a new mechanism behind alcohol seeking behavior | Therapy Toronto, Canada
The case for prescription heroin
Vancouver gives heroin to drug users suffering from addiction — and it works | Vox, Canada
Eight recover after Melb GHB overdoses
Eight people treated for suspected overdoses of so-called party drug GHB in Melbourne over the weekend have been released from hospital | SBS, Australia
Advice kept secret for a year as pubs and clubs penalty scheme watered down
Successive NSW ministers kept secret for a year findings of a statutory review of a penalty regime for badly behaving clubs and pubs while pushing through changes softening the scheme more than recommended | Age, Australia
War on drugs: Raw sewage testing shows drop in meth use across WA
New figures show methamphetamine use has plunged across WA, providing the first real evidence that the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on combating the drug is paying off | Perth Now, Australia
The Australian Greens just won a Senate vote to let terminally ill people import their own medicinal cannabis
Greens leader Richard Di Natale has won a month-long campaign in the Senate to let terminally ill patients personally import medicinal cannabis | Business Insider, Australia
Sweden figured out how to stop people smoking
A chart published last month by the European Union as part of a survey about attitudes towards tobacco in Europe lists the percentage of daily smokers in 28 countries. At the top is Bulgaria, where 36 per cent of the population smokes daily. Greece and France are close behind, with 35 and 33 per cent respectively | Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Drug support group chief spared jail for heroin supply
The former chief executive of the WA Substance Users Association has escaped an immediate jail term after being found guilty of supplying heroin to her partner, and a friend | West Australian, Australia
New Zealand government received $1.7 billion in duty on tobacco sales in 2016
The government received a total of $1.7 billion in duty on tobacco sales in 2016 from the big three producers, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and Philip Morris, which all lifted sales in New Zealand last year | NZHerald, New Zealand
Could Thailand, which gave world the bong, legalise cannabis for medicinal use? After failed war on drugs, attitudes have softened
Thaksin Shinawatra considered legalising marijuana, and recently a justice minister aired same idea, amid mounting evidence of its medicinal benefits. If it happened, it could be a game changer for drug policy in Southeast Asia | South China Morning Post, China
Blogs, comment and opinion
Nicotine in the news
Well, not quite ‘in the News’ more my news – or rather vignettes from an ordinary life that have wider implications | NSP Blog, UK
Support. Don’t Punish walking with the stars in Ghana
The first ever Support. Don’t Punish campaign organised in Ghana was in 2015 with a stakeholder’s dialogue that brought together key state institutions in charge of the enforcement of the drug legislation, civil society activist, public health workers, human rights activist, lawyers and more importantly the most affected population of the punitive drug laws in Ghana | Talking Drugs Blog, UK
More people are voluntarily seeking help for marijuana addiction
As marijuana is increasingly liberalised and decriminalised fewer people are finding themselves in court... | Washington Post Blog, USA
The drunkard's club
To many people, the history of alcoholic mutual aid societies begins in 1935 with the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.). A.A. history buffs are aware that there was another society, the Washingtonians, that existed almost a century before Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith first met | William White Papers, USA
Cannabinoids could make opioids more effective, meaning pain relief with lower doses and reduced risk of dependency
In animal studies, four times less morphine and ten times less codeine was needed when cannabinoids were given at the same time | Research gate, USA
Sunday Herald Sun: Time to challenge the attitudes of illicit drug use that affect every part of our community
Throughout history the debate on the use, misuse, prohibition or control of drugs has been topical and at times divisive. Recently, the debate has again been enlivened by discussing peripheral issues to reduce potential harm to those in our community who choose to use illicit substances | VAADA, Australia