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Weekly news - 8th November 2024

In date order, Monday to Friday

Opened 1 Nov 2024, Closes 20 Dec 2024. The Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill was introduced in the Scottish Parliament on 15 May 2024 by Douglas Ross MSP. Annie Wells MSP is the additional member in charge of the Bill. The Bill, as introduced, seeks to make provision about the rights of persons addicted to drugs or alcohol to receive treatment for addiction. Responses to this call for written evidence will help to inform the Committee’s scrutiny of the Bill, including the selection of witnesses to be invited to give oral evidence on the Bill | Scottish Parliament, UK

Watchdog: shift from crisis model for alcohol & drugs

Audit Scotland has revealed that barriers persist for people trying to access alcohol and drug services, meaning services are not tailored to individual needs – recommending widescale changes including how the Scottish government funds services. The national watchdog reports that Scotland is behind on its landmark ‘mission’ to reduce drug and alcohol harms, including long-awaited workforce plans to help move away from crisis-led services | Healthandcare.scot, UK

Reported recreational drug and new psychoactive substance use versus laboratory detection of substances by high-resolution mass spectrometry in patients presenting to an emergency department in London with acute drug toxicity

[Open access] Clinicians managing patients with acute recreational drug or new psychoactive substance toxicity typically depend on self-reported drug(s) used. This study compares patient self-report (and/or from other sources) to the substance(s) that were subsequently identified in serum | Clinical Toxicology, UK

Disposable vapes ban could push some users back to smoking, ministers told

Defra report warns there could be ‘health disbenefits’ with 29% of vapers reverting or relapsing to cigarettes | Guardian, UK

England may not be ‘smoke-free’ until 2039, cancer charity warns

Government plan to reduce smoking rates in danger of falling a decade behind schedule | Guardian, UK

Lung Cancer Awareness Month: Can I get lung cancer if I’ve never smoked?

Lung cancer experts tell Lisa Salmon that although smoking causes most cases, nearly a third are in non-smokers | Independent, UK

DDN November 2024

Twenty years ago I was sitting in our little office in London, typing my first editorial (p20). ‘This issue we catch up with Caroline Flint at the Home Office, who shares some interesting thoughts on drugs and crime…’ Remarkable that back then you could speak with the drugs minister directly! Now we’ve been round the block a few times but some things have changed very little. We still need a robust alcohol strategy. We still talk about harm reduction as if it’s optional. We still rediscover a link between substance use and mental health. We’re still finding that releasing people from prison without all-round support is leaving them to sink. And did we actually leave the old harm reduction v abstinence debate behind – or just go via recovery to change the language? | DDN, UK

Press release: Smoking ban introduced to protect children and most vulnerable

The government will introduce plans for tougher action to protect people from the harms of smoking in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill today | Department of Health and Social Care and The Rt Hon Wes Streeting MP, UK

Plans to ban smoking outside schools and hospitals

The government has announced plans to make it illegal to smoke in children's playgrounds and outside schools and hospitals in England, with some places also becoming vape-free | BBC, UK

The agony of ketamine addiction: ‘I felt like I was peeing glass’

It is gen Z’s recreational drug of choice in the UK and US – and with rising use come big problems, including incontinence, bladder damage, renal failure, depression and extreme pain | Guardian, UK

County Lines are changing to become more localised, reveals new County Lines Strategic Threat Risk Assessment

The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) County Lines and Gangs alongside the National County Lines Coordination Centre (NCLCC) have released the County Lines Strategic Threat Risk Assessment. Key findings reveal that: 1)The County Lines threat has become more localised, with fewer lines running outside force boundaries and fewer children recorded by the police as involved in any capacity. 2) County Lines is a higher risk enterprise for those criminals’ intent on controlling lines and 3) External lines (cross a force boundary) have reduced by 12.2%, whilst internal lines (start and end within a force boundary) have increased by 232%, year-on-year. This represents the shift from a traditional County Lines Business Model to one that is more local | NPCC and NCLCC, UK

Pub garden smoking ban dropped from government plans

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he didn't want to cause further harm to the hospitality industry, adding that "people don't want to see their high streets going down the pan" | BBC, UK

Consultation outcome: Mandating quit information messages inside tobacco packs

We sought your views on mandating pack inserts for all tobacco products to help more smokers quit and complement the existing regulations on tobacco packaging. After considering the responses, the UK government and devolved governments will work together to mandate pack inserts for cigarettes and hand rolling tobacco. We will consider later extending this to all tobacco products, tobacco related devices, cigarette papers and herbal smoking products where possible, after we have explored uniform packaging for these product types | OHID, UK

Afghanistan: opium cultivation increased by 19 per cent in second year of drugs ban, according to UNODC

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan in 2024 increased by an estimated 19 per cent year-on-year to cover 12,800 hectares, according to a new survey released by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) today. The increase follows on a 95 per cent decrease in cultivation during the 2023 crop season, when the de-facto Authorities of Afghanistan enforced a ban that virtually eliminated poppy cultivation across much of the country. Despite the increase in 2024, opium poppy cultivation remains far below 2022, when an estimated 232,000 hectares were cultivated | UNODC, Austria

Menthol filters and rolling papers likely undermining UK ban on menthol cigarettes

UK legislation that came into force in May 2020 aimed to curb menthol cigarette use, banning cigarettes with a “characterising flavour”. However, previous research by UCL found that a million adults (one in seven adult smokers) still reported using menthol-flavoured cigarettes after the ban. The new study, published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research, found a substantial increase in roll-your-own tobacco use among those smokers who reported using menthol flavouring, from 50% in October 2020 to 62% by June 2022 | UCL, UK

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