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Daily news - 6th June 2025 |
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UK news
Council gets £10m boost for drug and alcohol support
Lancashire County Council has been handed more than £10m by the government to prevent drug and alcohol-related deaths and help those with addiction issues. The authority said the cash, which has been put together by consolidating other grants for services like recovery programs and housing schemes for vulnerable people, was one of the largest amounts allocated across England | BBC, UK
BRIEFING | Making work pay in supported accommodation (PDF)
Supported housing exists to help people to live as independently as possible, helping improve their quality of life, their well-being, their health, and their employment prospects. Yet people in supported housing face a specific barrier and disincentive to work due to the way the welfare system is configured | St Mungo's et al, UK
Harm Reduction: Theories & Applications to Minimise Risks
Wednesday, June 11 · 6 - 9:30pm GMT+1. £34.00. This training will look at what is meant by a 'harm reduction' approach and how this can be applied to support people who use drugs | The Loop, UK
Webinar: County Lines, Policing and Vulnerability
Thursday, July 3 · 1 - 2pm GMT+1. This webinar explores the UK’s first national study of police responses to county lines and related child and adult criminal exploitation | Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre, UK
Alcohol will not be served at motocross event
Alcohol will not be sold at this year's British Motocross Grand Prix after police hit out at a "lawless" previous event | BBC, UK
Footballer jailed for £600k drugs smuggling plot
A professional footballer who imported £600,000 worth of cannabis from Thailand to the UK has been jailed for four years | BBC, UK
Two men admit smuggling cannabis as Yankee Candles
Two men have admitted conspiring to import millions of pounds worth of cannabis labelled as "Yankee Candles" from America to south Wales | BBC, UK
£10k haul of banned disposable vapes seized
Illegal vapes worth up to £10,000 have been seized after complaints they were being sold to children | BBC, UK
International news
Mothers in Addiction Recovery Rising: The Will And The Way (PDF)
A new report exploring mothers in addiction recovery was launched last week by the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin. The report: Mothers in Addiction Recovery Rising: The Will and the Way represents a deliberate shift in how research is approached and conducted. The team worked alongside mothers as co-authors of the report to explore how systems can be advanced with mothers in addiction recovery, rather than for, on or about them. It emerged from a desire to centre both the lived (past) and living (current, evolving) experiences of mothers involved, particularly as mother-women navigating addiction recovery and acknowledging that they bring not only insight but essential wisdom needed to shape more responsive and humane systems | Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Quantity of cocaine seized in EU countries has almost doubled in past three years
The quantity of cocaine seized in EU countries has almost doubled in the past three years, according to the bloc’s drugs agency | Irish Examiner, Ireland
European Drug Report 2025: Trends and Developments
The European Drug Report 2025: Trends and Developments presents the EUDA’s latest analysis of the drug situation in Europe. Focusing on illicit drug use, related harms and drug supply, the report provides a comprehensive set of national data across these themes, as well as on specialist drug treatment and key harm reduction interventions | EUDA, Portugal
Inside the Collapse of the America’s Overdose Prevention Program
Layoffs and funding freezes have gutted the CDC’s response to the opioid crisis—just as harm reduction was beginning to work | Scientific American, USA
Vending machines for reducing harm associated with substance use and use disorders, and co-occurring conditions: a systematic review
[Open access] Vending machines are used to extend and plug gaps in the distribution of naloxone kits and sterile injecting equipment. This review found 30 studies which together “provided limited yet promising evidence on feasibility, acceptability, reach and impact of [vending machine]-delivered harm reduction efforts” | Harm Reduction Journal, USA
New approach reverses opioid overdoses more safely, rat study shows
Opioid overdoses are a major public health issue in the U.S., killing tens of thousands of people every year. The medicine naloxone, which is available as an over-the-counter nasal spray or given by injection, has saved countless lives by rapidly reversing opioid overdoses. But in blocking opioid receptors in the brain, naloxone causes severe withdrawal symptoms, including pain, vomiting and agitation | Medical Xpress, USA
Estimating the Prevalence of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in Australia
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is caused by prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) and characterised by severe neurodevelopmental impairment. Australian studies have reported PAE prevalence of between 14% and 78% of births. Estimating national FASD prevalence in the general population using gold-standard active case ascertainment is costly and time-consuming, and alternative approaches are required | DAR, USA
Blogs, comment and opinion
The Art of Recovery - Blog from Alex Mazonowicz
I don’t remember the first time I heard Pet Sounds, but I do remember the first time I really listened to it. I was on a ferry crossing over the Bosphorus in Istanbul, and for the first time since the age of 14, I had not drunk alcohol or used drugs in more than a week | AntiStigma Network blog, UK
Bert Brooker: psychiatrist and polar adventurer who advocated the “British system” of prescribing heroin
In the early 1980s the UK felt the blast of a new wind blowing from the US, bringing with it calls for prohibition in response to president Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs. Opposition was brewing among UK politicians and some doctors to the so-called “British system” of prescribing heroin to people who had become dependent on it, a model developed in the 1920s by Humphrey Rolleston. At the time Bert Brooker, a senior consultant psychiatrist at Halton Hospital in Cheshire, former Royal Air Force serviceman, and Antarctic adventurer, had been running a drug dependency clinic for several years. He was a strong advocate of the British system | BMJ obituary, UK
Sadiq Khan is right: Britain must decriminalise cannabis – or remain in the dark ages
Criminalising drugs ruins lives and wastes police resources. Other countries realise this – when will UK politicians wake up? | Guardian opinion, UK
'When the going gets tough’: Leadership change at UNODC amidst global turmoil, UN reforms and drug policy opportunities
Last week, Ghada Waly, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), resigned from her position citing family reasons. Her announcement came in a Friday afternoon email to all staff, and comes at a critical juncture both in terms of drug policy reform as well as geopolitics | IDPC blog, UK