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Daily news - 10th May 2024

UK news

Rapid Action Drug Alerts and Response (RADAR) Alerts: Xylazine alert

This alert covers: Recognising and responding to an overdose; information for people who take drugs; actions for high-risk settings; actions for drug and alcohol service staff and actions for emergency service, clinical and healthcare staff | PHS, UK

Latest figures show cost of smoking in England up 25% to at least £21.8 billion

As the Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee starts to scrutinise the Bill line-by-line, ASH publishes new calculations by Landman Economics. This shows that the estimated cost of smoking, as quoted by the Government in the Command paper, Stopping the Start, has increased from £17.0 Bn to £21.8 Bn, a rise of 25% | ASH, UK

WithYou launches new charity website to support people facing challenges with drugs, alcohol and mental health 

A new website from charity WithYou will encourage more people to seek support with challenges around drugs, alcohol and mental health. During a comprehensive research phase, the charity spoke with its own clients, external stakeholders, staff and other people with lived experience of drugs, alcohol and mental health to enhance the user experience. As a result, the new site features improved functionality, easier access to essential information to help people access support and a modern design | WithYou, UK

Evaluating the impact of minimum unit pricing (MUP) on alcohol sales after 3 years of implementation in Scotland: A controlled interrupted time-series study

[Open access] On 1 May 2018, Scotland introduced minimum unit pricing (MUP), a strength-based floor price below which alcohol cannot be sold, throughout all alcoholic beverages. The legislation necessitates an evaluation of its impact across a range of outcomes that will inform whether MUP will continue beyond its sixth year. We measured the impact of MUP on per-adult alcohol sales (as a proxy for consumption) after 3years of implementation | Addiction, UK

Heroin’s fatal mixer

Synthetic opioids have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in America. Now one group of such drugs—nitazenes—is increasingly being found in Britain | Prospect Magazine, UK

Enter the Recovery Street Film Festival

We are inviting anyone who is directly or indirectly affected by drug or alcohol use (individuals, family members, friends, professionals) to make a film of 1-3 minutes and submit it for inclusion in the festival. The judges will be looking for the most original and imaginative approaches to telling stories of recovery, and films should show a link to our theme of the year, ‘Belonging’. Films could be short dramatic plays, using actors, drawn or stop-frame animation, documentary style pieces, personal stories etc. The message that we want the films to convey is one of positivity and hope: recovery from drug and alcohol use is possible and is happening all around us | Phoenix Futures, UK

York stop smoking service to expand with government funding

City of York Council has been awarded nearly £200,000 of government funding to help residents quit smoking | BBC, UK

Recovering alcoholic from Hebburn says 'I would be dead' without support to turn life around

A man who battled alcohol for decades says he would "probably be dead" had he not found the support to turn his life around. At his worst, Lee Chrisp was drinking up to two litres of vodka a day and lost jobs, his home, relationships and ended up sleeping rough in London | ITV, UK

Grimsby mum-to-be praises local Swap & Stop team who helped her kick smoking habit for good

A Grimsby mum-to-be who has smoked since the age of 19 has credited the "amazing support" she has received from a specialist team at Grimsby Hospital as being the catalyst to help her finally kick the habit for good | Grimsby Live, UK

Teenagers taken to hospital after vaping incident

Devon and Cornwall Police said the students from Paignton Academy had appeared unwell after using the vape and required medical care | BBC, UK

What is Glasgow's Alcohol Court and how does it work?

Glasgow Sheriff Court operates a unique service specifically to deal with offenders who admit to having a harmful relationship with alcohol - here is everything you need to know | Glasgow Times, UK

61st Maudsley Debate on ‘High Time: This house believes that cannabis should be legalised in the UK within 5 years.’ - video

Video of the recent debate for and against the motion | KCL, UK

Cannabis: Mental Health

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made a recent assessment of the potential impact of cannabis usage on mental health | They work for you, UK

Alcoholic Drinks: Labelling

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they plan to take to meet their 2020 commitment to a consultation on alcohol calorie labelling | They work for you, UK

Smoking: Health Education

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of patients who smoke have received very brief advice on smoking cessation in NHS hospitals | They work for you, UK

Drugs: Crime

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of trends in the number of convictions for class (a) A and (b) B drug possession in the last five years | They work for you, UK

Move to increase age cigarettes can be sold

A proposal to increase the age cigarettes can be sold to people in Guernsey has been put forward | BBC, UK

Faith, Families and Recovery Forum

Online, 10am, Thursday 6 June 2024. Aunee Bhogaita has first-hand experience of childhood sexual abuse, anorexia, domestic violence, self-harm, and alcohol addiction; and her story reflects the experiences of many others | Adfam, UK

Dr Katie East named 2024 winner of the Fred Yates Prize for Early Career Researchers

President of the SSA, Professor Owen Bowden-Jones, has announced the decision to award Dr Katie East the 2024 Fred Yates Prize for Early Career Researchers, in recognition of her “outstanding contribution, predominantly in the area of nicotine product use and perceptions” | SSA, UK

Huyton Firm: Brutal organised crime group brought down by its own text messages

More than 30 serious criminals have been jailed after police cracked their encrypted text messages and uncovered a violent feud over stolen drugs | BBC, UK

Arrests over supply of drugs linked to man's death

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said officers were waiting for the results of toxicology test results, but it was believed the 21-year-old had taken a substance containing nitazenes, which he had believed was diazepam | BBC, UK

 

International news

Integrated care vans with Kathleen Page

In this episode, Ben Scher talks to Dr Kathleen Page about her evaluation of an integrated care van that ran in Baltimore offering healthcare interventions and buprenorphine prescribing. Dr Page discusses using a cluster randomised trial to compare outcomes in different neighbourhoods (those where the van did and didn't go) and to explore whether the van was effective at improving health outcomes for people who inject drugs | SSA, UK

Future cancers may emerge from long-term vaping - expert

The emergence of future cancers and cardiovascular problems is "almost a certainty" from long-term exposure to vapes, according to a Professor of Chemistry at Royal College of Surgeons Ireland | RTe, Ireland

LSD-Assisted Psychotherapy in Switzerland: Interview with Peter Gasser -podcast

We interviewed the renowned psychiatrist, Peter Gasser, who conducted the first clinical study on the therapeutic use of LSD after research on psychedelics was outlawed in the 1960s | Drug Reporter, Hungary

Foster Care and Health in Medicaid-Enrolled Children Experiencing Parental Opioid Use Disorder

In this cohort study of 1 985 180 children experiencing parental opioid use disorder, foster care involvement increased from approximately 2% in 2014 to 5% in 2020. Compared with children without foster care involvement, foster children had significantly higher rates of mental health, developmental disorders, and substance use diagnoses and elevated levels of health care utilization | JAMA Network, USA

Scope of maternal substance use disorder crisis is dramatically underestimated, says study

In a new study, published in the June edition of Annals of Epidemiology, researchers at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health found traditional measurements greatly underestimate the true impact of substance use disorders (SUD) on the maternal mortality crisis | Medical Xpress, USA

Are Nicotine Patches for Kids Who Vape a Good Idea?

A report from Public Health Wales (PHW) said that children in this position should receive “support not punishment.” The agency’s incident response group has been looking into a rise in vaping among children and young people in Wales. According to the April report, “an increasing number of children are experiencing dependency at a level that makes it very difficult to get through the school day without vaping on school premises.” | Filter Magazine, USA

A New Bid to Legalize All Drugs in New Zealand

We don’t have a global drug problem; we have a global drug policy problem. It’s called prohibition, and it seems we are not sure how to fix it. But New Zealand has a few ideas | Filter Magazine, USA

Australian study finds large support for blocking online alcohol content

In a new study published in Health Promotion Journal of Australia, La Trobe University researchers found large support for a browser plug-in that blocks online alcohol-related imagery to prevent young people being influenced to start drinking alcohol or drinking to excess | Medical Xpress, USA

“Recovery is Complicated”: A Qualitative Exploration of Canadian University Students’ Diverse Recovery Experiences

[Open access] While the field of recovery science has burgeoned over the past two decades, little research has considered the experiences of university students in recovery from addiction, particularly in Canada. Addressing this gap, using a recovery capital framework, 16 qualitative interviews were conducted to explore students’ meanings, experiences, and barriers/facilitators to recovery from problematic substance use and/or behaviors | Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, Canada

UNSW secures over $20m in clinical trial funding

Conjoint Professor Nadine Ezard from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre and clinician researchers from the National Centre for Clinical Research on Emerging Drugs (NCCRED), have been awarded $2.2 million to trial a new pharmaceutical drug to help in the treatment of methamphetamine use disorder | UNSW, Australia

 

Blogs, comment and opinion

The emergence of nitazenes on the Irish heroin market and national preparation for possible future outbreaks

On 9 November 2023, the Health Service Executive Ireland (HSE) was notified of an unusually high pattern of opioid overdoses occurring in Dublin city centre among people attending homeless services. This represented the very early signs of drug market changes and the emergence of N-pyrrolidino protonitazene in Ireland. During the following 5 days there were 57 overdoses among people who use heroin in Dublin city centre, followed by a second outbreak over 6 days in the Cork region in December. Rapid responses helped to protect people who use drugs through an urgent analytical review of samples, mobilization of frontline services to deliver tailored harm reduction measures and ‘Red Alert’ risk communications issued for these regions | Addiction letter, UK

Is a little bit of alcohol really good for us?: What we have learned from better-designed studies

Research has long found that, when compared with abstinence, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with lower risk for a diverse range of health outcomes. But determining whether alcohol is truly health protective depends on whether we can tease apart causation from association – what we call ‘causal inference’. Until recently, most studies did not use strong methods for causal inference. In our new paper, we review studies that have used newer, more robust methods to see what they can tell us about the effects of alcohol on our health | IAS blog, UK

How can we measure the size of Australia’s illegal cannabis market – and the billions in taxes that might flow from legalising it?

At the end of this month, a senate inquiry by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee is due to hand down its report on a bill to legalise cannabis | Conversation, Australia