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UNDERLYING CAUSES
Drug services should increase their focus on
underlying traumas and difficulties, according to a
new report from the Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF).
High quality psychological therapies need to be
more widely available, says
Trauma and recovery
amongst people who have injected drugs within the
past five years
, with failure to respond effectively
storing up future problems for individuals, families
and society. Interviewees’ drug use was primarily a
‘dysfunctional coping response’, says the
document. ‘We hope that the findings of this
research will help challenge the all-too-common
perception that a person’s drug problem is a
lifestyle choice or “self inflicted”,’ said SDF
director David Liddell. ‘We need to recognise and
take action on the wider factors underpinning
substance use dependency which have blighted
generations of disadvantaged families across
Scotland.’
Available at www.sdf.org.uk
HEP STEP
A commitment to introduce an opt-out test for
hepatitis C and other blood-borne viruses by next
April has been included in a partnership
agreement on co-commissioning health services in
prisons between the National Offender
Management Service (NOMS), NHS England and
Public Health England (PHE). It is thought that up
to one in ten prisoners has hepatitis C, a virus
that is ‘grossly underprioritised’ according to the
Hepatitis C Trust (
DDN
, November, page 4). Trust
policy advisor Becky Hug called the agreement a
‘brilliant step forward to improving public health,
both inside and outside prison walls’.
PBR PROBLEMS
Payment by results has suffered from ‘crude
implementation’, according to a report from the
National Council for Voluntary Organisations
(NCVO), with some contracts failing to account for
the complex nature of services or containing
targets irrelevant ‘or even detrimental’ to the
desired outcomes. ‘Implementing PbR effectively
requires intelligent thought and carefully crafted
incentives, but many PbR contracts fall well short
of this,’ said NCVO chief executive Sir Stuart
Etherington. ‘Crudely designed targets and
contracts risk pushing expert voluntary sector
providers out of public service provision.’
Payment
by results contracts: a legal analysis of terms and
process at www.ncvo.org.uk
WELSH DEATHS DOWN
The number of deaths related to drug misuse in
Wales fell to just over 130 last year from more
than 150 in 2010, according to Welsh
Government statistics. More than 200 lives have
also been saved since 2009 through the take-
home naloxone campaign, the government says.
Substance misuse in Wales 2012-13 and Working
together to reduce harm: substance misuse strategy
annual report 2013 at wales.gov.uk
NEWS IN BRIEF
December 2013 |
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Round-up
People who buy alcohol on behalf of underage
drinkers should face penalties including community
service, shop bans or ‘social shaming’, according to a
report from think tank Demos.
Information campaigns on underage drinking should
also target parents, says
Sobering up
, while shop staff
should be properly trained in how to refuse sales.
The report wants to see far tougher action on
‘proxy purchasing’ from local authorities and police, as
a third of 11 to 15-year-olds surveyed reported
obtaining alcohol in the previous month. One in five
were given the alcohol by parents and the same
proportion by friends, and 13 per cent had asked
others to buy them alcohol compared to just 3 per
cent who had illegally purchased it themselves.
Alcohol-related community service, such as clearing
up city centres, would be a ‘justifiable penalty’ for
proxy purchasing, says the document, along with
prominently displayed ‘name and shame’ posters in
off-licences. Although £5,000 fines are available in law
for purchasing alcohol on behalf of a child, the current
on-the-spot fine is £90.
‘The majority of teens get their alcohol through
parents, friends and older siblings, rather than buying
it themselves,’ said report author Jonathan Birdwell.
‘However, these proxy purchasers aren’t facing the
consequences for the harm they are doing. All the
evidence shows that underage drunkenness increases
alcohol risks later in life.’ Far tougher action than the
current practice of test purchasing was needed, he
said, including ‘threatening parents who buy alcohol
for their children to drink unsupervised with “social
shaming” like community service’.
Meanwhile, a report from the National Foundation
for Educational Research (NFER) states that giving young
people ‘the facts’ about alcohol and equipping them to
make informed decisions helps to delay the onset of
drinking. Of around 4,000 12 to 14-year-olds surveyed,
those who had learned about alcohol and making
responsible choices in Personal, Social and Health
Education (PSHE) lessons at school were ‘significantly’
less likely to start drinking than those who hadn’t.
Meanwhile, Portsmouth – cited in the Demos
report as the first local authority to introduce a hotline
for people to report proxy purchasing – has launched a
new initiative to persuade off-licences not to sell beer
and cider with an alcohol volume of more than 6.5 per
cent. So far 25 retailers have signed up to ‘Reducing
the strength’, a partnership project with Hampshire
Constabulary.
Sobering up at www.demos.co.uk
Talk about alcohol: an evaluation of the Alcohol
Education Trust’s intervention in secondary schools at
www.nfer.ac.uk
For a full report on Alcohol Concern’s annual
conference, see news focus, page 6
Target ‘enablers’ of teen
drinking, says think tank
Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation rose by 36 per cent this
year, a record high, according to the UN, while opium produc-
tion was up almost a half on the previous year, at 5,500 tons.
The area under cultivation in 2013 was almost 210,000
hectares, says the United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime’s (UNODC)
2013 Afghanistan opium survey
, higher
even than 2007’s peak of 193,000 hectares. Prices are also
much higher than during the previous high-yield years of
2006-08, it says, with the ‘farm-gate value’ of opium
production increasing by almost a third since last year.
One possible reason for the increased cultivation may be
farmers trying to ‘shore up their assets as insurance against
an uncertain future’ prior to next year’s withdrawal of
international forces, says the document. Almost 90 per cent
of cultivation takes place in nine southern and western
provinces, including ‘the most insurgency-ridden provinces
in the country’, with a significant slowdown in Afghanistan’s
legal economy also predicted for next year.
The figures were ‘a warning, and an urgent call to action’,
said UNODC executive director Yury Fedotov. ‘If the drug
problem is not taken more seriously by aid, development
and security actors, the virus of opium will further reduce
the resistance of its host, already suffering from dangerously
low immune levels due to fragmentation, conflict,
patronage, corruption and impunity.’
Available at www.unodc.org
Afghanistan sees record opium crop
‘Farmers trying to
shore up their assets
as insurance against
an uncertain future.’