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Weekly news - 9th October 2026 |
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In date order, Monday to Friday
Green Councils Fight For Drug Consumption Rooms
The Green Party’s success in English local elections has put fresh impetus behind efforts to follow Scotland in providing safer drug consumption facilities to addicts | Politics Home, UK
Hundreds of professionals urge Government to stand firm on tobacco and vape regulations as consultation closes
Hundreds of health, education and public health professionals have written to the Health Secretary urging the Government to stand firm in the face of industry campaigns against new regulations designed to protect children from tobacco and nicotine marketing | ASH, UK
Shut vape loopholes and child-appeal flavour tricks – and fully fund enforcement, LGA urges Government
Government needs to write new vape and tobacco rules so tightly that companies cannot find “loopholes and flavour tricks” to keep appealing to children, councils set out today | LGA, UK
WithYou launches pilot treating the trauma related to substance use - for those who have served
With research showing that 65% of people in the armed forces have a problem with alcohol, and 12% of personnel seeking mental health support, WithYou is launching a veteran trauma-focused treatment pilot in North Lincolnshire, Wigan and Leigh, North Somerset, and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole | WithYou, UK
Trauma-informed psychological support alongside long-acting injectable buprenorphine: clients’ perspectives on the Buvidal psychological support service (BPSS) pilot in Wales
[Open access] Long-acting injectable buprenorphine reduces opioid use for up to a month, but along with the benefits comes mental clarity which can expose unresolved trauma and psychological symptoms. Integrated into buprenorphine treatment in Wales, a psychological support service is seen as "a central rather than optional component of care for these clients" | Frontiers in Psychiatry, UK
Dangerous animal tranquiliser with no human antidote found in UK street drugs
Medetomidine can significantly increase the risk of overdose | Independent, UK
DDN Magazine October 2026
Is support reachable on a difficult day? If someone misses an appointment or stops responding to messages, how easy do we make it for them to reconnect? Do we find out what’s been happening? If recovery isn’t a straight road, then support needs to be reachable on a difficult day, when confidence is low and asking for help feels hardest | DDN, UK
Adult smoking habits in the UK: 2025
Around 4.9 million people aged 18 years and over (9.8% of the population) smoked cigarettes in the UK in 2025. This is a decrease from 2024 (10.6%), which follows a long-term downward trend. The proportion of current smokers has fallen by 10.4 percentage points since this data time series began in 2011 (20.2%), based on our estimates from the Annual Population Survey (APS) | ONS, UK
Smoking profile: statistical commentary, October 2026
An overview of the extent of smoking, smoking-attributable harm and the measures being taken to reduce that harm at a local level in England | OHID, UK
Proportion of people in Great Britain vaping who never smoked doubles in four years
More than 1 million people in Great Britain now vape despite never having been regular smokers, with rates nearly doubling in just four years, according to figures that health experts describe as concerning | Guardian, UK
Service to help young people stop vaping and smoking
A new service is being launched in secondary schools in Derbyshire to help young people stop vaping and smoking."Vibe" will provide confidential support, one-to-one coaching, quit planning, behaviour change support and nicotine replacement therapy to students aged 12-18 who agree to be referred to the service | BBC, UK
BSPD supports King’s College Hospital on new vaping and oral health leaflet for teenagers
The British Society of Paediatric Dentistry (BSPD) has partnered with King’s College Hospital to produce a new evidence-based leaflet “Beyond the clouds: The truth about vaping” designed to help teenagers understand the risks that vaping poses to their oral and general health | The Probe, UK
People who use opioids can reverse overdoses with take-home naloxone
There is a sound evidence base supporting the use of Naloxone; most of this evidence has relied on self-reported information about individual overdoses and whether Naloxone was used to reverse the overdose successfully or not. This blog explores research by Metrebian and colleagues published in 2026, which not only investigated the use of Naloxone, but also followed up participants over six months to gain greater detail about how and when the medication was used | Mental Elf blog, UK
Smokers have a lower risk of Parkinson’s – we may have found out why
Smoking is one of the biggest causes of ill health and early death. Yet smokers seem to have a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease than non-smokers – by around half according to some studies. This surprising link was first reported more than 50 years ago, when researchers in the UK and the US noticed that smokers were dying at much higher rates overall, but were less likely to die from Parkinson’s. Many studies since then have found the same pattern | Conversation, UK
Tesco predicts a low-alcohol ‘healthier’ Christmas
Tesco has raised its profit outlook as it expects households to splash out this Christmas – despite buying less alcohol – as they shrug off “uncertainty” over the Iran war | Guardian, UK
Government pledges earlier support to tackle mental health crises
Responding to the findings of the Independent Review into prevalence and support for mental health conditions, ADHD and autism, the Government has committed to a major overhaul of mental health support in the forthcoming Mental Health Strategy. This will set out a renewed focus on prevention and early intervention, to make sure that people receive the right help, at the right time, in the right place, based on their needs | DHSC, UK