UNEXPLORED TERRITORY
A new report from UKDPC, Charting new waters:
delivering drug policy at a time of radical reform
and financial austerity, examines how areas will
be able to achieve the aims of the drug
strategy at a time of structural reform and
substantial cuts in public spending. The speed
and scale of reforms could undermine many of
the gains from a decade of investment and risk
delivering poor value for money, says the
report, which is based on 14 months of
interviews, surveys and workshops with
frontline staff and policy makers. Improved co-
ordination and integration between public
health and criminal justice agencies is
necessary, it says, alongside a ‘nationally
managed and coordinated resource for
authoritative evidence’ and a balanced
approach to drug-related enforcement activity.
Available at www.ukdpc.org.uk
NAILING IT
A new DVD to provide prisoners with
information about drugs and alcohol has been
produced by the Young Offenders Institute at
HMP Portland in Dorset in partnership with
Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership
NHS Trust, Weymouth College and the Princes
Trust. Nailed, which will be shown to young
offenders as they leave prison, came about
because the offenders felt the drug and
alcohol information they had access to was of
poor quality. The film was written, shot and
edited by the prisoners, with technical help
from Weymouth College media students. See
page 8 for our prisons feature.
SEARCH STATISTICS
Police stopped and searched nearly 1,300,000
people and/or vehicles in 2010/11, 8 per cent
less than the previous year, according to
figures released by the Home Office. Forty-six
per cent of all stops and searches were carried
out by the Metropolitan Police, and overall stop
and searches under Section 1 of the Police and
Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) – which gives the
police the power to look for drugs, weapons or
stolen property – rose by 4 per cent to
1,222,378. Nine per cent of those searched
were arrested, with 37 per cent of arrests for
drugs, and drugs accounted for around half of
the items most commonly searched for.
www.homeoffice.gov.uk
DERKACZ DEPARTURE
Anton Derkacz has left KCA after 24 years, ten
of them as chief executive. He thanked staff
and partner organisations for all they have
done to empower service users, and was
commended by trustees for his passion and
commitment. Caroline Felton is interim CEO.
Overhaul consultation for NDTMS
The NTA has launched a consultation on its proposal to
amend the data collected by the National Drug Treatment
Monitoring System (NDTMS) to make sure it remains
‘relevant to the delivery of specialist substance misuse
interventions for young people’.
The amendments – which would be effective from April
next year – include improving the recording of specialist
interventions and their settings and the risk factors and
outcomes for young people, removing unnecessary data items
and updating how information relating to hepatitis C and B is
captured. ‘We are keen to have input into this process and we
are committed to listening to the views of the field and
responding to them appropriately to ensure the amendments
are practical and achieve their aims,’ says the agency.
A new online bulletin has also been launched by the
Department of Health to support the eight new payment by
results (PbR) pilot sites and their provider organisations, as
well as provide information for anyone interested in
developing local models.
Meanwhile, chief executive of Brighton and Sussex
University Hospitals NHS Trust, Duncan Selbie, has been
named as chief executive designate of Public Health
England, which takes over responsibility for drug and alcohol
treatment services from next April. ‘I do not in any way
underestimate the challenge this represents,’ he said. ‘By
getting this right, I believe Public Health England will make a
unique and extremely positive contribution to the public’s
health alongside local government and the NHS.’
NTA consultation at www.nta.nhs.uk/yp-dataset-
2012.aspx until 25 July
PbR bulletin at recoverypbr.dh.gov.uk
See our feature on the new PbR pilots on page 12
May 2012 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 5
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
News |
Round-up
‘We can’t arrest our way out of the
drug problem’, says White House
The US government has launched a new drug strategy,
which it says will prioritise public health and recovery-
based principles over law enforcement.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy’s
2012 Drug
control strategy
is guided by ‘three facts’, says the White
House – ‘addiction is a disease that can be treated; people
with substance use disorders can recover; and innovative
new criminal justice reforms can stop the revolving door of
drug use, crime, incarceration and arrest’.
At the moment, one in four American prisoners are
incarcerated for drugs offences (
DDN
, March, page 9). The
new strategy, however, will divert non-violent drug
offenders to treatment rather than prison and improve
youth outreach work. The strategy contains more than 100
specific actions to reform US drug policy through ‘innovative
and evidence-based public health and safety approaches’.
‘Outdated policies like the mass incarceration of non-
violent drug offenders are relics of the past that ignore the
need for a balanced public health and safety approach to
our drug problem,’ said director of national drug control
policy, Gil Kerlikowske. ‘The policy alternatives contained in
our new strategy support mainstream reforms based on
the proven facts that drug addiction is a disease of the
brain that can be prevented and treated and that we
cannot simply arrest our way out of the drug problem.’
The strategy has been criticised by some organisations
advocating drug law reform, with Bill Piper of the Drug
Policy Alliance writing on the
Huffington Post
that ‘while
the rhetoric is new’ the government remained committed
to ‘punitive approaches’.
President Obama, however, told the recent CEO
Summit of the Americas in Colombia that it was ‘entirely
legitimate to have a conversation about whether the laws
in place are ones that are doing more harm than good in
certain places’. While legalisation had the capacity to be
‘be just as corrupting if not more corrupting than the
status quo’, he said, he was ‘a big believer in looking at the
evidence [and] having a debate’. Dealing with demand in a
more effective way was central to tackling the issue, he
stated, as well as addressing the economic and structural
issues in countries where drugs were grown and produced.
Drug strategy at www.whitehouse.gov
News in
Brief
REVVING UP FOR RECOVERY!
A new partnership project launched by
East Coast Recovery will see people in
recovery working at Andy’s Garage in
Lowestoft, Suffolk, and being trained up in
all aspects of running the business. East
Coast Recovery’s growing recovery
community already includes a picture
framing business and well-established
recovery café, among many other projects.
More information at
www.eastcoastrecovery.co.uk