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Weekly news - 12th April 2024

In date order, Monday to Friday

Notice: Addiction Mission

The health and wider societal costs to society in England of illegal drug use is approximately £20 billion per year, with the harms from alcohol use estimated to cost another £25 billion. Since 2012 the number of drug-related deaths has increased by 80%, and there are now approximately 4500 UK deaths annually due to drug misuse. In addition there are over 9600 annual UK deaths from alcohol. The Addiction Mission, announced as part of the UK’s Drug Strategy: From Harm to Hope, and delivered as one of the Office for Life Sciences Healthcare Missions, is aiming to help reduce this cost by enhancing the UK-wide research environment and incentivising the development of innovative and effective new treatments, technologies and approaches to support recovery, and reduce harm and deaths | DHSC, DSIT, Office for Life Sciences, UK

Research and analysis: ACMD advice on 2-benzyl benzimidazole and piperidine benzimidazolone opioids

Updated: A fourth addendum has been added, recommending the proposed generic definition be further updated to capture the suspected newly identified compound methylenedioxynitazene and any structurally related compounds to it that may appear in future | ACMD, UK

Correspondence: Government response to the ACMD work programme 2024

Dear Professor Bowden-Jones, Thank you for meeting me on 20 February to discuss the ACMD’s work programme for 2024, which was published on 14 February. I am very grateful to the ACMD for expediting the reports on Acyl Piperazine Opioids, including 2-Methyl-AP-237; and Recently encountered uncontrolled novel benzodiazepines and related compounds (2024) update, published on 27 March and 28 March respectively, following my request at that meeting. The government will consider and respond to those reports in full, separately... | Rt Hon Chris Philp MP, Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Fire, UK

Quitting smoking could redirect £11bn a year into local economies, study says

Money spent on tobacco products in England ‘could instead be spent in shops, on entertainment or other services’, author adds | Guardian, UK

Cancer charity supports NI alcohol warning labels

From 2026, it will be a legal requirement for all bottles of alcohol in the Republic of Ireland to carry a label | BBC, UK

Drug checking service opens at Sydney injecting room but NSW still blocking festival pill testing

Participants in Kings Cross pilot project to be surveyed to see if tests change the way they use drugs | Guardian, UK

Drug treatment boss throws down gauntlet to authorities in bid to open life-saving overdose prevention service

Exclusive: Exasperated charity ‘standing up for local residents’ with self-funded plan to reduce drug harms and stop discarded needles littering streets | Independent, UK

Official Statistics: Liver disease profile, April 2024 update

New mortality data for the calendar year 2022 and hospital admission data for the financial year ending 2023 has been added to the liver disease profile, trend data has also been made available. The England rate of premature deaths from alcoholic liver disease in 2022 was 11.6 per 100,000 population aged under 75 (5,776 deaths) | OHID, UK

[Open access] This paper aimed to (i) update a previous typology of British alcohol drinking occasions using a more recent and expanded dataset and revised modelling procedure, and (ii) estimate the average consumption level, prevalence of heavy drinking, and distribution of all alcohol consumption and heavy drinking within and across occasion types | IJDP, UK

A quarter of inmates on drugs at prison - report

A third of a prison's inmates said it was "easy to access illicit substances" and a quarter of them are active drug users, a report has found | BBC, UK

Wellingborough prison's first inspection finds widespread drug use

The first government inspection of a new prison has found illegal drugs are widely available and inmates are not suitably supported by staff | BBC, UK

Bid for first drug checking service in Dundee

Scottish charity Hillcrest Futures has submitted a bid to establish a drug checking service in Dundee, aimed at addressing potential contamination of illegal drugs and reducing associated harms | Hillcrest, UK

Xylazine has infiltrated the UK's illicit drug market

Xylazine, a powerful animal tranquiliser linked to horrific side effects, is now widespread in the UK illicit drug market | KCL, UK

Investing in the public health grant

Additional but time-limited funding for drug and alcohol treatment and smoking services and support has been allocated to local authorities. Taking account of this additional spend leaves broader public health funding 21% lower on a real-terms per person basis since 2015/16 | The Health Foundation, UK

NHS testing initiative to eliminate hepatitis C in England by 2025

Liver scanning and portable testing units to be rolled out in communities where people may be at a higher risk | Guardian, UK

Drug-safety and harm reduction initiative for UK nightlife, Safer States, launches

A new initiative, Safer States, has been introduced in the UK to address drug safety and harm reduction in nightlife settings. Launched as a collaborative effort between the Good Night Out Campaign, Release, Safe Only Ltd and The Love Tank, Safer States aims to provide essential harm-reduction information and challenge the stigma surrounding drug use | DJ Mag, UK

Xylazine, heroin and drug markets with Caroline Copeland - audio

In this episode Ben Scher talks to Dr Caroline Copeland about her work analysing drug death data to identify drug use trends, harms and to inform policy. Caroline talks about how xylazine first entered the US drug market but has been increasingly identified in Europe and the UK, even being identified in vapes sold as containing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Caroline covers the harms from xylazine and the implications for public health practitioners before relating the UK issues to wider global drug markets | SSA, UK

Forward Leeds launches edibles awareness campaign

Forward Leeds is embarking on a campaign to raise awareness about cannabis, with a particular focus on cannabis edibles | Forward Leeds, UK

Laughing gas abuse caused student's death - Berkshire coroner

Ellen Mercer, 24, died in hospital in February 2023, two weeks after she was left bedbound by burning her legs with a laughing gas canister | BBC, UK

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