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Daily news - 27th March 2023 |
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UK news
Nitrous oxide: Possession of laughing gas to be criminal offence
Possessing laughing gas is to be made a criminal offence for the first time, the government has announced | BBC, UK
Keir Starmer unveils mission to halve serious violent crime and raise confidence in the police and criminal justice system to its highest levels
There’s a family in my constituency – every night cannabis smoke creeps in from the street outside into their children’s bedroom – aged four and six. That’s not low level – it’s ruining their lives | Labour Party, UK
Vapes seized after medical incidents at Bolton high school
Police have seized 2,800 suspected illegal vapes across Bolton after three "medical incidents" at a local high school were linked to similar devices | BBC, UK
Patients given aripiprazole ‘should be told of gambling addiction risks’
Patients who are prescribed a common antipsychotic used to treat depression, bipolar disorder, psychosis and schizophrenia need to be told there is a risk they could develop a gambling addiction, an expert has warned | Guardian, UK
WDP and partners shortlisted for HSJ Partnership Awards 2023
WDP has been shortlisted for the Best Healthcare Analytics Project for the NHS Award, Best Pharmaceutical Partnership with the NHS Award, and Most Impactful Project Addressing Health Inequalities Award at this year’s HSJ Partnership Awards, along with its partners in the Hepatitis C Drug Treatment Services (DTS) Provider Forum | DDN, UK
Electronic Cigarettes: Children and Young People
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) reduce the number of young people recreationally using e-cigarettes and (b) prevent young people moving from using e-cigarettes to tobacco cigarettes or other tobacco products | They work for you, UK
Smoking
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether it remains his Department's policy to have a national target to be smokefree by 2030 | They work for you, UK
Changing Futures Spring Newsletter (PDF)
We are really pleased to be able to share details with partners regarding a new housing project taking place in North East Essex | Phoenix Futures, UK
Alcohol (in)justice
Wed, 19 Apr 2023 09:45 - 15:30 BST. SHAAP is delighted to host a symposium exploring the journey of people with alcohol problems in the justice system | SHAAP, UK
Alcohol Occasionals -Availability, the poor cousin of marketing and pricing
Tue, 25 Apr 2023 12:45 - 14:00 BST. “Availability is the poor cousin of marketing and pricing”: Qualitative study of experts’ views on policy priorities around alcohol" | SHAAP, UK
Operation to tackle drug gang crime in South West
Local police forces and the Office of Police and Crime Commissioners said they would work together to try to disrupt illegal drug gang activities | BBC, UK
Family homes connected to man at centre of huge drugs bust seized
Relatives of a man at the centre of one of the UK's largest cocaine busts have had their homes seized by the courts | BBC, UK
Huyton drug runner caught after getting fingerprint evidence from his selfies
A criminal who moved more than 160kg of class A and B drugs was caught after he posted photos of his hands - enabling police to lift fingerprint evidence | ITV, UK
International news
Drugs and alcohol do not make you more creative, research finds
Travel, meditation, training and exposure to culture have a greater effect on artistic output | Guardian, UK
Last orders? Belgium’s Trappist beers under threat as vocations run dry
The country’s oldest Trappist brewery faces an uncertain future after a decline in people entering monastic life | Guardian, UK
UAE pardons Israeli woman who faced life in prison
The United Arab Emirates has released an Israeli woman a year after she was convicted on drug charges | BBC, UK
Australian teenagers urge government to help them break vaping addiction
Submissions to the TGA include comments from 13-19-year-olds who want restrictions in place to help them with nicotine addiction | Guardian, UK
Australia’s kids are hooked on vapes – what are we doing about it? – Full Story podcast
The health minister has accused the vaping industry of making a ‘new generation of nicotine addicts’ amid rising reports of vaping addiction in teenagers and nicotine poisoning in toddlers. This comes as a vaping reform inquiry reveals an ‘overwhelming’ number of health experts and authorities support tighter border controls around nicotine vaping products | Guardian, UK
Tobacco and e-cigarettes might be subject to higher age limit in Latvia
On Thursday, March 23, the Saeima approved amendments in the second reading, which plan to prescribe that tobacco products, substitute products, plant smoking products, electronic smoking devices, and fillers will be prohibited to sell to persons under the age of 20 | Eng.Lasm.Lv, Latvia
HHS Announces Over $120 Million In Funding Opportunity for Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics Providing Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Care Across the Country
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), announced two funding opportunities for Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) expansion, totaling $123.6 million | SAMHSA, USA
Buprenorphine after nonfatal opioid overdose found to result in reduced risk of overdose death
Drug overdose deaths are a significant public health concern in the United States. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, there were more than 105,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021, which were largely attributed to opioids. Rutgers researchers found that opioid-involved overdose deaths following nonfatal overdose events are largely preventable with buprenorphine medication for opioid use disorder | Medical Xpress, USA
Imagine hurling your favorite drink away from you: A new technique reduces alcohol craving
Craving alcohol is a core symptom of alcohol use disorder and an important target for recovery. Given most people with alcohol use disorder do not seek treatment, easy and appealing interventions may help more people initiate recovery. This randomized controlled trial examined a unique, brief treatment for alcohol use disorder that used imagined experiences and movements to help override an individual’s urge to drink | Recovery Research Institute, USA
Sexual minorities and women veterans die younger than straight veterans due to alcohol use
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) veterans die younger than heterosexual veterans due to alcohol related harms. This study investigated specific alcohol harms and whether this disproportionate burden experienced by LGB veterans is more prominent in some types of harm versus others | Recovery Research Institute, USA
Environmental Ruin, Aided by Drug War: How Can Defenders Fight Back?
Land use and control, combined with prohibition, is the fundamental motor driving environmental harm relating to production and sales of illicit drugs, as previous parts of this series have shown. Yet even eliminating illicit drugs, an impossibility, would not protect habitats that are systematically destroyed when they are turned over—officially, or effectively—to miners, cattle ranchers, developers, fossil fuel extraction companies or electricity plants | Filter Magazine, USA
How DMT Generates “Novel Worlds” of Experience
Anew study may give us the most detailed understanding yet of how psychedelic drugs affect our brains. Using brain imaging of participants who had been given DMT (dimethyltryptamine, the key ingredient in ayahuasca), researchers recorded how it boosts connectivity between regions of the brain involved in functions like language, memory, decision-making and imagination | Filter Magazine, USA
Supervised consumption site working well: staff
The Yukon’s first supervised consumption site opened in Whitehorse months after the government declared a territory-wide substance use emergency in January 2022 | Whitehorse Star, Canada
Alcohol-related injury: hospitalisations and deaths, 2019–20
Many hospitalisations and deaths involve injury where the person injured had consumed alcohol, referred to here as “alcohol-related” injury. This report presents data from 2019–20 on 30,000 hospitalisations and almost 1,950 deaths from alcohol-related injury. For both males and females, falls, intentional self-harm and assault were the leading causes of hospitalisation. Among all hospitalisations for injury, 1 in 4 intentional self-harm and 1 in 5 assault cases involved alcohol | AIHW, Australia
Searching the grey literature to access research on illicit drug use, blood borne virus, and coverage of interventions among people who are incarcerated
This technical report outlines websites associated with various databases and organisations that could provide grey literature resources related to illicit drug use, blood borne virus, and coverage of interventions amongst people who are incarcerated | NDARC, Australia
I had nothing, and drugs don’t leave”: Young offenders’ perspectives on Alcohol and Other Drugs (AoD) - video
This webinar looked at the contexts of young offenders’ alcohol and other drug use and the implications for harm reduction strategies. The importance of multi-level interventions that move beyond ‘victim blaming’ and ‘individual responsibility’ were discussed and the importance of including consumer perspectives in framing AoD discourses more broadly was explored | NDARC, Australia
Clarifying Australia’s youth vaping figures
Over the past fortnight Australian media outlets have been awash with alarmist claims about a large increase in youth vaping. The problem was reported as being so dire that it prompted several Sydney private school principals to send letters to parents. These media reports provided no data on the size of the problem | University of Queensland, Australia
Vape flavours would be banned and import permit required under crackdown
Vape flavours would be banned, individual product packages would have warning labels, and importers would need a permit to bring vapes into the country under a crackdown being recommended by the Therapeutic Goods Administration to stamp out vaping among young people | SMH, Australia
Blogs, comment and opinion
The NHS can prescribe medical cannabis. So why are desperate patients being forced to go private?
The government changed the law but failed to make these products truly accessible – except via expensive private providers | Guardian opinion, UK
Lessons from Rehab
In 2005, concerned at the lack of choice in addiction treatment in Scotland and hearing frustrations from patients and families around lack of access to residential treatment, I sought support and funding to set up a drug and alcohol rehab service based on the therapeutic community (TC) model. This would be unique in Scotland as, based in the NHS, it would be free at the point of delivery, eliminating difficult funding pathways | Recovery Review blog, UK
Keir Starmer going tough on drugs is latest example of Labour ducking the argument in order to win
Having previously praised Scotland’s switch to warnings rather than prosecutions for people caught with Class-A substances, he’s now going hard on cannabis, and not in a fun way | Scotsman opinion, UK
TGA review strengthens case for much tighter vape restrictions at the border
On Friday, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) updated its review of proposed reforms to the regulation of nicotine vaping products. It reported the federal government is now “actively considering” the TGA’s advice | Conversation, Australia