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Letters
10 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| February 2014
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
COMMITTED TO
NALOXONE
Regarding Neil Hunt’s opinion piece, ‘A
matter of life and death’ (
DDN
,
December 2013, page 18): as the
service provider for Peterborough, we
are in absolute agreement that
naloxone should be available to
service users, especially high-risk
service users such as those leaving
prison and those accessing the needle
exchange. We fully appreciate that
naloxone is a potentially life saving
drug and with minimal training – we
provide it to service users and their
families on a case-by-case basis.
CRI provide the integrated recovery
service in Peterborough, which
incorporates prescribing interventions
and we have not been aware of any
contact made with our service, or with
our Peterborough commissioners, in
relation to take-home naloxone. Had
we been contacted, we would of
course have made the drug available.
We are keen to make take-home
naloxone available to all high-risk drug
users in Peterborough and provide
training for service users and their
families.
Our services in Sefton and East
Lancashire are an example of this.
Peer mentors, high-risk service users
and their families were identified and
trained. Naloxone is also made
available in the needle exchange, so
it is available to people who were not
engaged in treatment. Within the first
year of the scheme, we had
notification from the local ambulance
service that the availability of take-
home naloxone had saved three
people’s lives. We also had several
reports from service users, who
provided anecdotal evidence that
through the use of naloxone, drug-
related deaths had been avoided.
We, and commissioners locally, are
committed to ensuring that
Peterborough has a similar service
provision for take-home naloxone and
are currently making this available to all
high-risk service users across the city.
If the author of the article would
like to discuss this further or hear
about our success with naloxone in
other parts of the country, please do
not hesitate to contact us.
Alison Snelling, services manager,
CRI Aspire, Peterborough
GET CERTIFIED
Adfam and FDAP have jointly
developed a competency-based
certification for practitioners
supporting families affected by drugs
and alcohol. Adfam brings years of
experience of working with both
families and practitioners to the
creation of this unique certification
scheme, and FDAP its expertise as
the professional body and
membership organisation for the
substance misuse sector.
Currently FDAP provides
MEDIASAVVY
WHO’S BEEN SAYING WHAT..?
The idea that the existing policy on drugs in this country, and almost
everywhere in the world apart from Colorado and Uruguay, is a self-
evident failure is not a truth that is self-evident to me. In particular, the
‘war on drugs’, and the notion that it is being ‘lost’, is a cliché that helps
to shut down thought rather than encourage it… Legalisers sometimes
say that it is jolly confusing that cannabis is illegal in theory but that the
police tend to concentrate on more important things in practice. It’s a
compromise. It is so sensible that it is the most common legal position
all over the world: illegal but not stringently enforced for small
amounts. It is intellectually unsatisfactory, but it is winning. The people
who want to change it have to make a better case.
John Rentoul,
Independent
, 7 January
I am worried because I think of legalisation as a symbol. A symbol that
the world has become more accepting of living a mediocre life… the
more we accept pot and other distractions as perfectly normal, the more
we are accepting mediocrity.
Elad Nehorai,
Guardian
, 7 January
If marijuana is now deemed OK in Colorado – and dispensaries will open
soon in Washington as well, the other state that approved legal
marijuana at the end of 2012 – what message does that send to Mexico
and others fighting the war on drugs largely on America’s behalf?... As
a father I am not thrilled to see marijuana consumption encouraged.
What I surely do welcome, however, is the opportunity for the first time
to test in practice the argument that legalisation will do more to
diminish violence in America’s immediate neighbour and points south
than any amount of militarised prohibition.
David Usborne,
Independent
, 8 January
There’s no one simple and definite solution to substance abuse but the
argument for deterrence is not one. If millions want to drink, smoke,
snort and swallow then they will, whether it’s expensive or not, whether
it’s legal or not. If the government wants them to stop, it needs to give
them greater reason to; a reality they don’t want release from.
Chris Jackson,
Independent on Sunday
, 26 January
If the country is supposed to get upset because no gun-toting, drug-
peddling gangster is safe on the streets any more then forget it…
Gangsters who live by the gun – even those who throw them away
when the police close in – should expect to die by the gun. They are
vermin whose drug pushing threatens every decent family in the land
and if the police happen to take a few out as they clean up the streets
then so be it.
Chris Roycroft-Davis,
Express
, 10 January
[David Cameron] tried to pin the blame for Britain’s drinking culture on
the last government, which is fair enough, up to a point. Yet at the same
time as Mr Cameron condemns deregulation of alcohol and gambling,
we learn the extent to which his ministers, too, were lobbied by the
alcohol industry... While Labour should shoulder some of the blame, the
government needs to treat addiction to alcohol and gambling – often
affecting the same people – as a national emergency.
Jane Merrick,
Independent
, 8 January
LETTERS
‘We are keen to make take-
home naloxone available to
all high-risk drug users in
Peterborough and provide
training for service users
and their families.’