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Daily news - 3rd March 2025 |
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UK news
Committee to investigate workings of Glasgow’s Safer Drug Consumption Facility
The Scottish Affairs Committee will question representatives from Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and Glasgow City Council in the second session of its inquiry into Glasgow’s pilot Safer Drug Consumption Facility (SCDF). At the time of this session, the facility, also known as ‘The Thistle’ will have been open for 7 weeks. The Committee is likely to ask about the barriers to opening the facility, how the proposal for the facility has developed over time, and how effective it has been since it opened in January. Watch on parliament TV on Wednesday 5 March 2025, from 9.45am | UK Parliament, UK
Brits more than doubled ketamine intake in 2024 with 25 tonnes consumed
New figures from the Home Office show almost 25tonnes of the drug, also known as K or Special K, was used in 2024 – up from 10.6tonnes the year before | Metro, UK
Innovation and diversity in public health team engagement in local alcohol premises licensing: qualitative interview findings from the ExILEnS study
Study reveals how public health teams across England and Scotland are developing innovative approaches to influence local alcohol licensing decisions. Notably, one team was able to shape the fundamental criteria for which establishments could sell alcohol, a major shift from public health’s traditionally reactive role | NIHR, UK
Cannabis: Medical Treatments
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that children can access cannabinoid medications through the NHS; and what assessment he has made of trends in the level of families using non-prescribed cannabis to treat their children | They work for you, UK
Charity launches to support UK cannabis patients
CannCare will provide support to medical cannabis patients in the UK facing issues, as reports of discrimination and harassment continue to rise | Leafie, UK
Eight children in hospital over 'cannabis sweets'
Eight children were taken to hospital after being suspected of eating sweets laced with cannabis at a school in Sheffield | BBC, UK
Alcohol fuels more than half of city centre crimes
Councillors will be told that 1,005 violent crimes were recorded in the area between April 2023 and March 2024 | BBC, UK
Ministry of Sound to welcome sober ravers in new alcohol-free event series
The inaugural day rave will be headed up by the electronic DJ and singer DRIIA, herself a professed sober raver | Southwark News, UK
Let's talk e-cigarettes, February 2025 - podcast
Jamie Hartmann-Boyce and Nicola Lindson discuss emerging evidence in e-cigarette research and interview Olivier Drouin from the University of Montreal, Canada | University of Oxford, UK
NCA investigation leads to conviction of gang who forced migrants to work in cannabis farms
Six people have been convicted of being part of a crime group responsible for forcing trafficked migrants to work in cannabis farms. A National Crime Agency investigation identified that the ringleader of the gang, convicted people smuggler Mai Van Nguyen, 35, of Beetham Tower, Birmingham, was involved in the operation of a number of cannabis farms mainly throughout the Midlands, London and north of England | NCA, UK
Nearly 1,000 cannabis plants seized from warehouse
Police were called to reports of suspicious activity near St Peter's Street in Maidstone on Wednesday after gas engineers undertaking repairs in the area found a suspected cannabis cultivation | BBC, UK
Hundreds of e-cigarettes stolen in raid on lorry
A group of men threatened the driver of the vehicle as it was stopped on the A75 between the B7020 and B721 near to the Annan West junction at about 22:45 on Thursday | BBC, UK
International news
‘It’s packed with dealers. Look around you’: life amid the cocaine cartels of the French Riviera
Nice may be at the heart of France’s upmarket Mediterranean coast, but violent drug gangs making €1.5m a month are colonising part of it | Guardian, UK
Sniffer dogs deployed as NSW pill-testing trial begins in Wollongong
Attenders able to check what substances are in their illicit pills and powders at two-day Yours and Owls music festival | Guardian, UK
Mexican drug lord pleads not guilty to killing of DEA agent after US extradition
Rafael Caro Quintero arraigned in New York over federal agent’s death after years as one of US’s most wanted men | Guardian, UK
Psychedelics to manage opioid use with Noa Krawczyk - audio
In this episode, Dr Elle Wadsworth talks to Dr Noa Krawczyk from the Department of Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine about her and her co-authors research report on self-reported experiences and perspectives on using psychedelics to manage opioid use among participants of two Reddit communities | SSA, UK
Smoking and ‘the science of motivating young people’
Dr David Yeager’s new book, “10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People”, aims to help parents, educators, and policymakers understand how young people think and what kinds of messages they respond to. In this edited excerpt, Dr Yeager describes events around the ‘truth’ anti-smoking campaign in Florida in the late 1990s, where an advertising agency challenged the dominant approach of public health professionals | SSA, UK
Concerns rise as nitrous oxide misuse surges among young people
There are rising concerns about the prevalence of nitrous oxide misuse among young people as seizures of the potentially lethal gas skyrocket. Revenue seized over 54,600 canisters of nitrous oxide last year amid attempts to crack down on the recreational use of the substance | Irish Examiner, Ireland
EUDA Single programming document 2025-2027
This is the first SPD of the EUDA, which from 2 July 2024 replaced the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). Europe is facing unprecedented dangers from drugs, and this document reflects our mission to strengthen European Union preparedness on drugs | EUDA, Portugal
Nordic alcohol monopolies: understanding their role in a comprehensive alcohol policy structure and public health significance
Operating in Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the Faroe Islands, State-owned alcohol monopolies prioritise public health over profit. According to this WHO report, “Evidence consistently shows that privatization of alcohol sales increases consumption, while monopolization decreases it.” | WHO, Denmark
Smart AI coach helps smokers quit using reinforcement learning
Nele Albers of Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) uses AI coaches to help smokers quit smoking and vaping for her doctoral dissertation. She has developed an AI coach that uses psychologically informed reinforcement learning (RL), a form of machine learning in which a model learns through rewards, similar to how humans learn behaviors | Medical Xpress, USA
Hallucinogen use linked to 2.6-fold increase in risk of death for people needing emergency care
People seeking emergency care for hallucinogen use were at a 2.6-fold higher risk of death within five years than the general population, according to a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal | Medical Xpress, USA
Q&A: Why vaping is bad for your heart
Tobacco smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals, including tars that harm the lungs and cardiovascular system, and 60 known carcinogens that are inhaled with each puff of a cigarette. Smokers, however, are more likely to die from heart disease than lung cancer | Medical Xpress, USA
Blogs, comment and opinion
Homeless Britons say cost of addiction is forcing them into modern slavery – so why are they not being recognised as victims?
Patrick is 32 years old and has been homeless on and off in Edinburgh since growing up in care. He speaks with a rasping quality due to the ravages of sleeping outdoors in cruel Scottish winters. Until recently, he was one of thousands of people in the UK trapped in exploitation, often referred to as modern slavery | Conversation, UK
No, vaping is not as dangerous as smoking
We don’t know the long-term effects!” is the standard excuse for clamping down on e-cigarettes. It is not an objection raised against iPhones, wi-fi or most other new technologies, although it was one of the slogans of the “vaccine hesitant” during the pandemic | The Critic, UK
There is no evidence RFK Jr.'s plan for “healing” farms somehow helps people quit drugs
Science, not drug farms, is the answer to keeping our overdose numbers low | Salon, USA