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Daily news - 26th September 2022 |
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UK news
Stoptober launches to give smokers the confidence to quit
Smoking remains the single biggest cause of preventable illness and death in England | Department of Health and Social Care and Dr Caroline Johnson MP, UK
New support for victims of county lines exploitation
Hundreds more victims expected to be helped through funding of support services to 2025 | Home Office, UK
Services for county lines victims in England and Wales get funding boost
Up to £5m allocated to help young people escape drug gangs, with money also going to helpline | Guardian, UK
Alcohol duty: Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng scraps planned increase
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has scrapped planned increases in the tax paid on beer, wine, spirits and cider | BBC, UK
'Labour won't let you legalise drugs', Keir Starmer's frontbench tells Sadiq Khan
Sadiq Khan has been told he would not be allowed to legalise drugs in London under a Labour government | LBC, UK
'Caution' urged as suspected drug deaths fall by 22% in six months
Police Scotland data revealed there were 562 suspected drug deaths between January and June 2022 | STV news, UK
A comparative study of the harms of nitrous oxide and poppers using the MCDA approach
To inform future-decision making processes and ensure that any such decisions are based on the best evidence, Drug Science conducted a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) about N2O and poppers to compare the overall harms of these two drugs to the harms of 20 drugs previously evaluated and published by Nutt et al | Drug Science, Policy and Law, UK
Alcoholic Drinks: Consumption
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help reduce harms caused by alcohol consumption | They work for you, UK
Free medicinal cannabis to be donated to epileptic children in the UK
It comes after a mother campaigned for help for families facing large bills for privately-prescribed cannabis as they go through a lengthy application process for NHS treatment | Sky News, UK
UK Patient Conference: Medical Cannabis Awareness Week 2022
Fri, 4 November 2022, 10:30 – 18:30 GMT. This daytime conference will be a chance for the medical cannabis patient and prescriber community to come together and be heard | Drug Science, UK
Larne Port drugs: Man, 22, in court over £1.25m seizure
Mohammed Khan, 22, was arrested in England on Wednesday and charged with conspiring to supply Class A drugs | BBC, UK
International news
Why Gen Zers are growing up sober curious
A complex combination of outside pressures and information overload is driving young people to snub alcohol, far more than generations before them | BBC, UK
World Anti-Doping Agency decides cannabis to remain banned substance in sport
Cannabis will remain a banned substance in sport after a review by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) | BBC, UK
This is how Albanian gangs took control of Britain's cocaine
[Possible paywall] Every day between 5pm and 9pm children as young as 10 gather on the concrete football pitch in the northern Pascuales district of Guayaqui to learn how to murder | Telegraph, UK
Drug Smugglers Have Started Coating Liquorice in Heroin
Police discovered one of their biggest drug hauls hidden in a bag of liquorice root, as heroin seizures soar in India | VICE, UK
Recreational marijuana use in Australia could be legalised by federal parliament, Greens say
Party says commonwealth regulation of cultivation, licensing and sale of cannabis would override state and territory laws | Guardian, UK
Systems thinking for noncommunicable disease prevention policy: guidance to bring systems approaches into practice
Systems thinking is a comparatively novel but rapidly developing area of knowledge that can offer a number of approaches to address complex public health problems such as the prevention of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). This guidance provides a comprehensive overview of the systems approaches that can be applied to the different stages of the policy cycle | WHO, Denmark
E-cigarette addiction and harm perception: Does initiation flavor choice matter?
The 21st century was marked by a dramatic increase in adolescent e-cigarette use in the United States. The popularity of non-traditional flavor types, including fruit and pastry, is thought to contribute toward growing product use nationally, leading to a variety of federal and state regulations limiting the use of non-traditional flavors in the US. The relationship between flavor type and increased adolescent use suggests a possible link between flavor use and addiction and harm perception. This study assessed if the flavor type used when initiating e-cigarette use predicted addiction and harm perceptions | BMC Public Health, UK
Los Angeles school district will distribute overdose reversal drug to every K-12 school after student death, officials say
Schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District will soon be equipped with doses of naloxone, a drug used to temporarily reverse the effects of opioid drug overdoses, Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho announced Thursday | CNN, USA
Hospitals treat thousands of drug-related bike injuries each year
From 2019 to 2020, more than 11,000 people who had been using drugs were treated in U.S. emergency departments for injuries that occurred while riding a bicycle, according to a new report in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs | Medical Xpress, USA
New study identifies cortisol level as indicator of addiction recovery success
A new study by researchers at the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine found that lower initial cortisol levels may serve as a predictor for retention in treatment programs for substance use disorder | Medical Xpress, USA
How an addicted brain works
Addiction is now understood to be a brain disease. Whether it's alcohol, prescription pain pills, nicotine, gambling, or something else, overcoming an addiction isn't as simple as just stopping or exercising greater control over impulses | Medical Xpress, USA
Miami clinic kicks off first national study of LSD, once a 'public enemy,' to treat anxiety
The gurus of the psychedelic era of American pop culture extolled the experience of the "acid trip." But the U.S. government and much of the public remained leery of LSD, with President Richard Nixon declaring it and assorted other drugs "public enemy No. 1." | Medical Xpress, USA
“Rainbow Fentanyl” Is Probably a Good Thing, at This Point
When Toronto’s Moss Park Overdose Prevention Site opened as an unsanctioned service in August 2017, drug-checking data contributed by staff and participants caught the final few months that the city’s heroin supply was still mostly heroin. By Christmas, it had shifted completely to fentanyl. Initially this looked clear or white or beige; either powder or small crystals. But almost immediately it started showing up in color. Drug sellers, faced with a sudden crisis, were innovating to protect their customers and themselves | Filter Magazine, USA
Blogs, comment and opinion
Encouraging a ‘generational shift’ in the UKs relationship with drugs. A commentary on the new UK drug strategy. What can be achieved with drug prevention?
In this commentary, I focus on the potential impacts of drug prevention activity outlined in the Strategy and consider the feasibility of achieving this headline outcome considering constraints on UK prevention systems | IJDP commentary, UK
IAS responds to the Growth Plan 2022
On 23 September 2022, the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered his Growth Plan 2022 which sets out Government plans to tackle the rising cost of living and tame inflation, including the decision to freeze alcohol duty from February 2023 | IAS, UK
My drinking was ‘really, really dark’: Radio 1’s Dean McCullough on replacing Scott Mills and getting sober
‘What was a glass of wine of an evening after work turned into a bottle which turned into two bottles and then, some weekends, I was drinking a bottle of vodka too.’ | i news, UK
Treatment as usual isn’t cutting it (same for research as usual)
For most of my career, I’ve been responsible for managing treatment programs. I believed strongly in those programs. At one of those programs, we developed a continuum of care that provided treatment and substantial, structural recovery support for more than 2 years for people with high severity, high chronicity, and high complexity cases of addiction | Recovery Review blog, USA
Psychedelic Pasts, Presents & Futures Roundtable
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Pharmacy is hosting a Roundtable on September 27, 2022. In this hybrid roundtable, titled “Psychedelic Baselines,” a group of interdisciplinary panelists with different types of “psychedelic expertise” will discuss their research and recent activities. The roundtable will provide a baseline of understanding for those coming to the workshop from adjacent disciplines or fields outside of psychedelics. All are welcome to attend via Zoom | Points blog, USA