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Weekly news - 15th December 2023

In date order, Monday to Friday

Street drugs stronger than heroin linked to 54 deaths in UK

Super-strength street drugs more powerful than heroin have been linked to at least 54 deaths in the UK in the last six months, the BBC has been told | BBC, UK

Health-care resource use among patients who use illicit opioids in England, 2010–20: A descriptive matched cohort study

[Open access] People who use illicit opioids have higher mortality and morbidity than the general population. Limited research has investigated how this population engages with health-care, particularly regarding planned and primary care. We aimed to measure health-care use among patients with a history of illicit opioid use in England across five settings: general practice, hospital outpatient care, emergency departments, emergency hospital admissions and elective hospital admissions | Addiction, UK

Should vaping have same restrictions as tobacco?

Public Health Wales (PHW) thinks it should, with plain packaging and no displays in shops. The agency, which is part of NHS Wales, is also supporting calls for a ban on disposable vapes because it believes they are link to a growth in the habit among young people, as well as being harmful to the environment | BBC, UK

Drugs and me - Chatbot

This new chatbot provides personalised and expert drug information anytime. Using the chatbot is free and you stay anonymous. We've designed the chatbot for people who use drugs, their friends and family, and professionals who work with people who use drugs | Drugs and me, UK

HSE warns of 'extra risk' to drug users after eight overdoses in Cork in the last 36 hours

There have been no reported deaths to date, but drug users are being warned that a trace amount of a nitazene type substance has been identified by Forensic Science Ireland in a light brown powder asssociated with the overdoses | Journal, Ireland

Tobacco harm reduction and people experiencing homelessness – a UK perspective

In this Briefing Paper, we will explore: the impact of high rates of smoking among people who are homeless or sleeping rough; the barriers they face to smoking cessation; and ways in which support services could use tobacco harm reduction strategies to improve health outcomes for this group, including recent evidence drawn from initiatives that emerged in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic | GSTHR, UK

[Open access] There is limited provision of inpatient detoxification relative to other treatments for alcohol and other drug (AOD) use. This means people often need to wait prior to detoxifying. However, waiting for healthcare is generally perceived as negative and stressful. This paper aims to understand patients’ experiences of waiting for inpatient AOD detoxification to ascertain whether and how service-level policies and practices might be improved | IJDP, UK

Myanmar overtakes Afghanistan as top opium producer

The report by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says Myanmar's economy has been badly affected by conflict and instability since the military seized power in 2021 | BBC, UK

Raise age of sale for tobacco to give every child a smokefree start in life say baby charities

A coalition of baby charities has backed the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plans to increase the age of sale for tobacco by one year, every year, from 2027. They estimate this could help reduce the number of women smoking during pregnancy by around 10,000 a year by 2033 and create a smokefree generation | ASH, UK

Will Europe Escape America’s Opioid Death Crisis?

A worrying spike in synthetic opioid deaths is hitting Europe. But so far the continent has escaped a US-style death epidemic. Why is this and can it last? | VICE, UK

Risk of dying from cancer in England varies hugely between regions, say scientists

Theo Rashid, the first author of the study, who is a PhD student at Imperial, said: “The greatest inequality across districts was for the risk of dying from cancers where factors such as smoking, alcohol and obesity have a large influence on the risk of getting cancer. Researchers suggested that poverty and cuts to public health services, such as smoking cessation support, probably contributed to the acute differences in cancer death risk | Guardian, UK

Smoking decline stalls since Covid as more young people take up the habit - study

A decades-long decline in smoking in England has nearly ground to a halt since the pandemic, a study suggests. The rate of decline slowed from 5.2% in the years before the pandemic to just 0.3% between April 2020 and August 2022, according to the research | BBC, UK

Drug misuse in England and Wales: year ending March 2023

An overview of the extent and trends of illicit drug use. Data are from the Crime Survey for England and Wales. In the year ending March 2023, an estimated 9.5% of people aged 16 to 59 years (approximately 3.1 million people) reported using a drug in the last 12 months; 7.6% reported using cannabis (around 2.5 million people) and 3.3% reported using a Class A drug (around 1.1 million people) | ONS, UK

Magic mushroom use grows in England and Wales, ONS figures show

Use of ecstasy and nitrous oxide falls overall and drug use of all kinds falls among younger people | Guardian, UK

National statistics: Substance misuse treatment for adults: statistics 2022 to 2023

There were 290,635 adults in contact with drug and alcohol services between April 2022 and March 2023. This is a small rise compared to the previous year (289,215). The number of adults entering treatment in 2022 to 2023 was 137,749, which is higher than the previous 2 years’ figures (130,490 and 133,704). The numbers of people entering treatment was relatively stable from 2016 to 2017 up to 2021 to 2022 | OHID, UK

Nitazenes: Warning over super-strength street drugs linked to deaths

The Rapid Action Drug Alerts and Response (Radar) alert warned that nitazenes were mainly found in the form of counterfeit oxycodone tablets - usually blue and stamped with '30' or 'M'. | BBC, UK

Pattern of alcohol intake more accurate indicator of liver disease risk than overall consumption

Those who binge drink and have a certain genetic makeup are six times more likely to develop alcohol-related cirrhosis, according to new research from UCL, the Royal Free Hospital, the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge | UCL, UK

Review of the year – 2023

While the money promised in the wake of the drug strategy continued to flow into the treatment system, there were disturbing shifts in the country’s constantly changing drug supply – with more highly potent synthetic opioids being entering the market than ever before | DDN, UK

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