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Daily news - 7th February 2023

UK news

DDN February 2023 - out now

Dry January is firmly established as a popular campaign, with millions of people taking part. But we have a problem. As our cover story discusses (p6), a very small proportion of these were over 55 – the very age range found most likely to be drinking more than the weekly guidelines, with ingrained habits and a peer supported drinking social life. There’s no doubt that a new alcohol strategy is well overdue – but it must go beyond a focus on young people and have absolute relevance to the self-defined ‘moderate drinkers’ of an older generation who are routinely consuming more than 50 units a week | DDN, UK

New survey shows Councils welcome growth in NHS support to smokers

The annual Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) survey of local government public health teams, funded by Cancer Research UK, finds NHS investment in new inpatient treatment for smokers strongly supported by local government | ASH, UK

Drinks firms make plea over advertising to Scottish ministers

The letter marks the firms’ opposition to new restrictions that the Scottish Government is currently consulting on | STV News, UK

The clustering of physical health conditions and associations with co-occurring mental health problems and problematic alcohol use: a cross-sectional study

[Open access] There is strong evidence for the co-occurrence of mental health conditions and alcohol problems, yet physical health outcomes among this group are not well characterised. This study aimed to identify clusters of physical health conditions and their associations with mental health and problematic alcohol use in England’s general population | BMC Psychiatry, UK

Warning over tainted ketamine on Isle of Man after users fall ill

The alert comes after at least six suspected users of the class B drug received medical attention | BBC, UK

Middlesbrough Naloxone pioneer George Charlton on his work

George Charlton does life-saving work with people who use drugs. A scheme he pioneered in Middlesbrough in 2019 to make overdose-reversal medication Naloxone more widely available has now been rolled out across more than 30 UK locations | BBC, UK

The Safety And Tolerability Of Comp360 (Psilocybin) In Participants With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - call for recruits

The effects of PTSD can be extremely debilitating and current treatments aren’t always effective. Working with COMPASS Pathways as part of a multi-centre trial King’s researchers are investigating the safety and tolerability of psilocybin for people with PTSD. The study will begin at IoPPN and participants will receive a single 25mg dose of COMP360 psilocybin, given in conjunction with specialist psychological support. They will be followed up for 12 weeks and the study will primarily assess safety but also and changes in PTSD symptoms and quality of life | KCL, UK

Elf Bar vapes removed from shelves for being 50% over legal nicotine limit

The Chinese vaping giant admitted ‘inadvertently’ breaking the law and ‘wholeheartedly apologised’ following lab tests of its ‘600’ line of disposable vape pens. E-cigarettes bought at branches of Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons contained between 3ml and 3.2ml of liquid nicotine, when the legal limit is 2ml, or 2% strength | Metro, UK

Waltham Abbey: Heroin may have killed man before Parklands crash

A 53-year-old man may have already died from a heroin overdose when the car he was in crashed into an oncoming BMW, an inquest has heard | BBC, UK

International news

NT reinstates alcohol bans in effort to curb crime surge in Alice Springs

Federal government agreed to $250m in additional funding for measures including youth engagement programs and job creation | Guardian, UK

‘My cartridge-a-day vaping habit left me on life support’

Amanda Stelzer visited an urgent care centre in October 2019 as she was struggling to breathe, had severe lower back pain and felt like her heart was “beating out of her chest” | Independent, UK

Drug and Alcohol Trends Monitoring System (DATMS) 2022: Year 7

In 2015 we developed our DATMS in Dublin 15. The objective was to establish an evidence base for drug use in Dublin 15 and use this data to inform local service provision. The study is repeated annually to always have current information and monitor changes over time. This report documents the seventh year of our DATMS | Blanchardstown Local Drug and Alcohol Task Force, Ireland

The Mission to Make Psilocybin Available to UK Cancer Patients

“I was involved in oncology when I was a medic,” Dr. Malcolm Barratt-Johnson told Filter, “and in all honesty, the depression that comes with cancer wasn’t really regarded as an important aspect, which is wrong.” | Filter Magazine, USA

Support for Policies to Prohibit the Sale of Menthol Cigarettes and All Tobacco Products Among Adults, 2021

This study assessed support for commercial tobacco retail policies among adults. Data came from SpringStyles 2021, a web panel survey of adults in the US aged 18 years or older (N = 6,455). Overall, 62.3% of adults supported a policy prohibiting the sale of menthol cigarettes, and 57.3% supported a policy prohibiting the sale of all tobacco products. A majority of adults supported tobacco retail policies aimed at preventing initiation, promoting quitting, and reducing tobacco-related disparities | CDC, USA

Eliciting a history of vaping in adolescents is key to identifying EVALI cases

The severity of a lung disease associated with e-cigarettes in teens decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, but hospitalizations from the disease continued to mount, according to a study of more than three dozen patients by UT Southwestern researchers published in Pediatric Pulmonology | News Medical, USA

Compared perceptions of oral nicotine pouches and smokeless tobacco among young adults

In a recent study published in the journal PLoS One, researchers surveyed young individuals in the United States about their awareness/use of and susceptibility to nicotine pouches (NPs) | News Medical, USA

Pot is making people sick. Congress is playing catch-up

When Gallup asked about legalizing weed last year, two-thirds of Americans supported it — up from 12 percent when the pollster first asked in 1969 | Politico, USA

Project to Set Up 100 Harm Reduction “Vending Machines” Across Canada

Vending machines are increasingly being deployed to distribute harm reduction supplies in North America. As Filter has reported, they’re being used to dispense hydromorphone in a Canadian safe supply project, and naloxone and sterile syringes in New York City, among other examples. One of their notable benefits is the level of anonymity they provide | Filter Magazine, USA

Scotland's drug treatment and testing orders (DTTO) are controversial but they can have a dramatic effect – Karyn McCluskey

I sat in a court not far from Rabbie Burns’ birthplace a few weeks ago, invited by a sheriff after a chance meeting at an event | Scotsman opinion, UK

Why the drug poisoning crisis in B.C. won’t be addressed by the new decriminalization policy

On the same day that British Columbia began a new era in drug policy with the decriminalization of simple possession of some drugs, the province’s chief coroner provided a devastating update about the number of lives lost to illicit drugs during the previous year | Conversation, Canada

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