Reports: December

HIV Action Plan monitoring and evaluation framework

The Unlinked Anonymous Monitoring (UAM) Survey of People Who Inject Drugs (PWID) is an annual cross-sectional biobehavioural survey that recruits people who have ever injected psychoactive drugs who attend specialist drug and alcohol services across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland... In England the proportion of PWID ever having had an HIV test was 81% in 2021, with 32% reporting having had a test in the past 12 months. Among PWID who started injecting in the past 3 years, during 2020 and 2021, 58% reported ever having had a diagnostic HIV test, with 52% of these reporting a test in the past 12 months | UK HSA, UK

Forgotten voices: Policing, stop and search and the perspectives of Black children

Our latest research has found that only 36 per cent of Black children and teenagers trust the police compared with 75 per cent of young White people. The trust figure for Black people aged ten to 18 was the lowest of any ethnic group and was even lower among Black Caribbean children | Crest Advisory, UK

Volteface Launches Latest Report ‘Known Unknowns’ Examining Clinician Perspectives on Medical Cannabis

Known Unknowns represents a dive deep into the perceptions, concerns and hopes of UK clinicians for medical cannabis, which, although being legal since 2018, still sits on the fringes of the UK healthcare system with prescribing remaining low. Our report recognises that in order to move forward, the industry faces challenges, and for cannabis to become mainstream as a treatment, a number of concerns that currently exist amongst clinicians must be addressed | Volteface, UK

Humankind publishes Impact Report for 2021/22

We are a national charity with over 1,500 staff and 264 volunteers, who provide specialist services to young people, families and adults across health and wellbeing, drug and alcohol recovery, criminal justice services, housing and independent living and education and employment. This report recognises the impact we had in supporting the 90,264 people who accessed our services | Humankind, UK

Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity (PDF)

[Free book download] This book is about alcohol policy: why it is needed, how it is made, and the impact it has on health and well-being. It is written for both policymakers and alcohol scientists, as well as for many other people interested in bridging the gap between research and policy. It begins by examining the premise that alcohol is not an ordinary commodity, and it ends with the conclusion that alcohol policies implemented within a public health agenda are capable of reducing the harm caused by ethyl alcohol... | OUP, UK

Healthy Ireland survey 2022: summary report (PDF)

The Healthy Ireland Survey is an annual survey conducted with a representative sample of the population aged 15 and older living in Ireland. The sample size is typically in the region of over 7.500 people. Fieldwork to date has been conducted by Ipsos MRBI | Government of Ireland, Ireland

Adult smoking habits in the UK: 2021

Cigarette smoking habits among adults in the UK, including the proportion of people who smoke, demographic breakdowns, changes over time and use of e-cigarettes | ONS, UK

Official Statistics: Local tobacco control profiles: December 2022 update

The extent of tobacco use, tobacco related harm and the measures being taken to reduce this harm at a local level in England | OHID, UK

National naloxone programme Scotland - Quarterly monitoring bulletin

During 2022/23 Quarter 1 (1 April 2022 to 30 June 2022): 6,549 Take-Home Naloxone (THN) kits were issued and 4,931 THN kits were issued by services based in the community... | Public Health Scotland, UK

Make the change: community alcohol resource manual

The Alcohol Reduction Resource Manual has been designed to offer psychosocial, informational support, options, and practical materials to anyone who would like to consider making a change. The manual can be used by people seeking help to make changes to their own drinking behaviour or can be used by people providing support as well as family members and the wider community | Ballyfermot, Canal Communities, Dublin 12 and South Inner-City Drug and Alcohol Task Forces, Ireland

Alcohol-specific deaths in the UK: registered in 2021

In 2021, there were 9,641 deaths (14.8 per 100,000 people) from alcohol-specific causes registered in the UK, the highest number on record. The number recorded in 2021 was 7.4% higher than in 2020 (8,974 deaths; 14.0 per 100,000) and 27.4% higher than in 2019 (7,565 deaths; 11.8 per 100,000), the last pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic year | ONS, UK

Homelessness and drugs: health and social responses

This miniguide provides an overview of the most important aspects to consider when planning or delivering health and social responses for people experiencing homelessness and using drugs, and reviews the availability and effectiveness of the responses. It also considers implications for policy and practice | EMCDDA, Portugal

Families of people who use drugs: health and social responses

This miniguide provides an overview of the most important aspects to consider when planning or delivering health and social responses for families of people who use drugs and reviews the availability and effectiveness of the responses. It also considers implications for policy and practice | EMCDDA, Portugal

Technical Brief: Harm Reduction for People Who Use Drugs: Priorities for Investment and Increased Impact in HIV Programming (PDF)

This brief is meant to help applicants to the Global Fund plan for and scale up effective HIV and hepatitis C programming for people who use drugs, particularly those who inject | Global Fund, Switzerland

“Tuci”, “happy water”, “k-powdered milk” – is the illicit market for ketamine expanding? (PDF)

This Global SMART Update explores how drug traffickers introduce new ketamine-related products, including to new user groups and geographic areas, while sophisticated large-scale clandestine manufacture has been detected and new trafficking routes have been discovered | UNODC, USA

Cannabis in Australia (PDF)

This report aims to promote understanding of cannabis in Australia. At the forefront of discussion should be the questions of how to improve medicinal access for those who need it and how we can better reduce the harm caused by our laws and the substance itself as we progress toward a more informed and compassionate community | Penington Institute, Australia

Youth Voices on Treatment in the Shadow of the Overdose Crisis

This report emerged from a program of community-based participatory research focused on youth substance use and health. The program, based at the BCCSU, comprises three university researchers and a Youth Advisory Council of ten young people (ages 17 to 28) with lived and living experience of substance use and mental health concerns in the context of unstable housing and homelessness. Interviews with youth-focused care providers...also informed the report | BCCSU, Canada

Drugs A to Z: A guide to common drug names in Scotland

This guide has been produced by the RADAR Team at Public Health Scotland (PHS). The purpose of this document is to provide a resource for emergency service call handlers to appropriately identify, categorise and coordinate the response to emergency call outs involving drugs. It includes key street names of common drugs as well as brief descriptions of drug types and categories | Public Health Scotland, UK

Stop and search: a plan for change

An independent national task force must be set up to bring about wholesale changes in the way police in England and Wales use stop-and-search powers, particularly around public confidence and disproportionality - that’s the principal recommendation from our latest report | CREST, UK

Western Australian Drug Trends 2022: Key Findings from the Ecstasy and Related Drugs Reporting System (EDRS) Interviews

This year, we have provided a suite of products with the most up-to-date findings from interviews conducted annually from 2003-2022 with a cross-sectional sentinel group of people who regularly use ecstasy and other illicit stimulants recruited from Perth, WA | NDARC, Australia

Queensland Drug Trends 2022: Key Findings from the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) Interviews

This year, we have provided a suite of products with the most up-to-date findings from interviews conducted annually from 2000-2022 with a cross-sectional sentinel group of people who regularly inject drugs recruited from Brisbane/Gold Coast, QLD | NDARC, Australia

Tasmanian Drug Trends 2022: Key Findings from the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) Interviews

Deaths in prison: Examining causes, responses, and prevention of deaths in prison worldwide (PDF)

This briefing draws on information from survey responses from a variety of stakeholders (people working in prison administrations, prison inspectors and monitors, academics and non-governmental organisations) in 25 countries covering all regions, as well as 19 European prison administrations, following a call for information by PRI | Penal Reform International et al, UK

Report on an examination of the present approach to sanctions for possession of certain amounts of drugs for personal use (PDF)

Stakeholders, in addition to any general points on the topic, were asked to comment on whether they believe the criminal justice system is the most appropriate avenue for dealing with possession of small quantities of drugs for personal use; whether the current approach towards drugs is counter-productive in terms of dissuading people from drug use and encouraging engagement in rehabilitative programmes; and whether there are particular jurisdictions with alternative drug policies from which Ireland could learn | House of the Oireachtas, Ireland

National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-2022: Secondary School Students (PDF)

This study has surveyed nationally representative samples of adolescents in 8th and 10th grade since 1991 and 12th graders since 1975. It is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, and assesses adolescent use of dozens of substances | University of Michigan, USA

Drug misuse in England and Wales: year ending June 2022. An overview of the extent and trends of illicit drug use. Data are from the Crime Survey for England and Wales

Approximately 1 in 11 adults aged 16 to 59 years (9.2%; approximately 3 million adults) and approximately 1 in 5 adults aged 16 to 24 years (18.6%; approximately 1.1 million adults) reported last year drug use in the year ending June 2022; there was no change compared with the year ending March 2020 | ONS, UK

Health Survey for England, 2021 part 1

The Health Survey for England is used to estimate the proportion of people in England who have health conditions, and the prevalence of risk factors and behaviours associated with certain health conditions. Part 1 features Smoking, E-cigarettes and Alcohol. 79% of participants reported that they had drunk alcohol in the last 12 months, and 49% reported that they drank alcohol at least once a week. A higher proportion of men than women drank alcohol | NHS Digital, UK

The Benzo Research Project: An evaluation of recreational benzodiazepine use amongst UK young people (18-25)

The Benzo Research Project is a student-led group researching recreational benzodiazepine use in young people with the aim of sparking conversation and raising awareness. Over the course of 16 months, the Benzo Research Project collected 81 anonymous testimonies on non-medical benzo use amongst young people in the UK. We conducted an inductive thematic analysis of 73 testimonies received between March and September 2022 | Benzo Research Project, UK

Women, alcohol, pregnancy and FASD (PDF)

This report builds on work already being carried out in Scotland’s communities. Raising awareness and increasing understanding of FASD will help community nurses and midwives engage more effectively with those affected and the key people in their lives. The continuing professional development proposed in this report will focus on heightening their competence and confidence in this area of practice. The main findings and recommendations also appear as a series of blogs on the QNIS/ HPBL website | QNIS, UK

Remeasuring the Units An update on the organisation of alcohol-related liver disease services (PDF)

This short report summarises the results of a survey undertaken across NHS hospitals in 2020/21 and a round table discussion on the current status of Alcohol Related Liver Disease (ARLD) care. The report focuses on improvements that have been made across the system since ‘Measuring the units’ was published and also highlights areas where known deficiencies in services and care remain | NCEPOD, UK

National drug and alcohol treatment waiting times [Scotland]

This data release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) reports on waiting times for people accessing specialist drug and alcohol treatment services between 1 July and 30 September 2022. In 2011, the Scottish Government set a Standard that 90% of people referred for help with problematic drug or alcohol use will wait no longer than three weeks for specialist treatment that supports their recovery | Public Health Scotland, UK

Interim monitoring report on statutory funded residential rehabilitation placements

This is the fifth report on Residential Rehabilitation within the Monitoring and Evaluation Programme led by Public Health Scotland. The report presents information on the number of Alcohol and Drug Partnership (ADP) statutory funded placements into residential rehabilitation, with estimated costs, that were approved between 1 April 2021 and 30 September 2022 | Public Health Scotland, UK

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