Weekly news - 17th May 2013

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Home Office tour to study drug policies in 10 countries

Review to include Portugal's limited decriminalisation, Denmark's 'fixing rooms' and Sweden's zero-tolerance approach | Guardian, UK

Amazon halts sale of deadly legal highs after pressure from drugs campaigners

Amazon has pulled from sale two dangerous legal highs after pressure from drugs campaigners. On Saturday, the Mail revealed that salvia – described as more potent than LSD – and amyl nitrate were on sale on Amazon [DrugScope quoted]| Mail Online, UK

Drugs 2.0: The Web Revolution That's Changing How the World Gets High by Mike Power – review

The web has transformed drug use in profound and unsettling ways | Observer, UK

Giving to beggars 'fuels addiction' warns campaign in Manchester

People in Manchester should not to give money to beggars - charities, police and the city council have said | BBC, UK

UK launch for Lundbeck's alcohol dependency drug Selincro

Lundbeck has launched Selincro in the UK, giving patients access to the first new drug for alcohol dependence in more than a decade | PharmaTimes, UK

Biotie puts cocaine dependence drug into Phase II

Following in the footsteps of Selincro, its recently-launched drug to cut alcoholic urges, Biotie Therapies Corp has started a mid-stage study of nepicastat for cocaine dependence | PharmaTimes, UK

Barriers and facilitators to Hepatitis C treatment for people who inject drugs

Through qualitative interviews with HCV treatment providers and people who inject drugs (PWID) this research explores the experience of HCV treatment access and delivery from patient, provider and ‘system’ perspectives... | Skills Consortium, UK

Everyday lives of recovering heroin users

The research draws on the personal accounts of 40 recovering heroin users detailing the psychological, physical and social elements of their unique recovery journeys| Skills Consortium, UK

NIHR call for research proposals in the fields of alcohol and substance misuse in younger people

NIHR has now issued a call for new research on alcohol and substance misuse in younger people, under the NIHR Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Programme. This programme focuses on evaluating the clinical efficacy of an intervention and adding to our understanding of biological and behavioural mechanisms and processes | Medical Research Council, UK

Synthetic cannabis - video

Synthetic cannabis - 93% of tokers don't prefer it! The spray on stone - like fake tans are bad for your health. If it doesn't look like weed, smell like weed or taste like weed then don't smoke it. GDS and Dr John Ramsay discuss synthetic cannabis products and wonder why? | YouTube, UK

'Alcohol and British Society' - Alcohol Research UK - videos

Videos from Alcohol Research UK's 2013 conference took place on 12 March 2013, exploring alcohol and British society have now been uploaded to FEAD | FEAD, UK

The NICE Tobacco Return on Investment Tool

We are currently working to extend the tobacco return on investment tool (for example to include youth prevention) and are developing new return on investment tools for alcohol and physical activity - we aim to publish these 3 developments in the Autumn | NICE, UK

Support don't punish

New website for a global advocacy campaign to raise awareness of the harms that are being caused by the criminalisation of people who use drugs | IDPC, UK

Cannabis linked to prevention of diabetes

Regular users of the drug found to have lower levels of insulin after fasting, research shows | Independent, UK

First set of NICE public health quality standards revealed

Mike Kelly, Director of Public Health at NICE reacts to the announcement that NICE will produce public health quality standards | NICE, UK

Can the therapeutic relationship be too good?

Rarely has substance use counselling been so deeply analysed as in this US study. The far-reaching implications are that some counsellors generate more effective relationships with clients which feed through to better outcomes - but also that the ‘best’ relationships are not on average the most effective | Drug and Alcohol Findings, UK