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THE BALLARD OF ALCOHOL CONCERN
Alcohol Concern has announced that
Jackie Ballard will take over as chief
executive from next month, having
previously headed up RSPCA, Action on
Hearing Loss and Womankind Worldwide.
She replaces Eric Appleby (
DDN
, June
2013, page 16), who has been acting in
an interim capacity. ‘There is an uneven
battle between the global drinks
industry, which deploys massive
resources to promote its products and
influence behaviour, and those, including
Alcohol Concern, who are campaigning
for a change in drinking culture,’ she
said. ‘It makes this a challenging but
crucial role and it is one that I am
looking forward to taking on.’
PRISON PROBLEMS
Britain’s prisons are ineffective at tackling
alcohol-related criminal behaviour,
according to a survey commissioned by
Addaction. Despite the fact that 70 per
cent of prisoners questioned for
The
Alcohol and Crime Commission report
had
been drinking when they’d committed their
offence, the report found little evidence of
either support on release or to help them
understand the role of alcohol in their
offending. The commission wants to see
improved training for prison staff and for
alcohol treatment to form a key part of
prison rehabilitation, including ongoing
support in the community. ‘A staggering
number of prisoners committed a crime
while drinking, but unless they’re alcohol
dependent the system doesn’t properly
recognise them as problem drinkers,’ said
Addaction chief executive Simon Antrobus.
‘This means that people are leaving prison
without the support they need.’
PROJECT APPOINTMENT
Sue Clements is the new CEO of
Westminster Drug Project (WDP), the
organisation has announced. She
previously led development of health
and justice services at Care UK.
PART OF THE PICTURE
Five new briefings have been published
as part of the Lesbian and Gay
Foundation and University of Central
Lancashire’s
Part of the picture
research
project into drug and alcohol use in the
LGBT community. The documents contain
recommendations for service providers,
policy makers, commissioners, GPs and
researchers.
Briefings at www.lgf.org.uk
Local authority areas with a high level of alcohol-related harm
are the least likely to expect increased funding to tackle the
problem, according to a new report from Alcohol Concern.
While most local authorities expect funding for alcohol
services to stay the same or increase over the next three
years, nearly a third of treatment providers report that
they’ve seen funding decrease over the previous financial
year, says
A measure of change: an evaluation of the impact
of the public health transfer to local authorities on alcohol
.
Most also expect it to fall over the next three years.
The report’s findings are based on questionnaires sent
to local authorities and clinical commissioning groups. ‘It
was hoped that the transfer of responsibility to local
authorities would lead to greater responsiveness to local
need, and local authorities appear have taken on board the
scale of alcohol harms and given the issue due priority,’
says the document. However, those in areas experiencing
high levels of alcohol harm are ‘more fearful’ about future
funding. Areas with higher levels of harm are more likely to
be deprived and have competing pressures on their public
health budgets, with some of the poorest boroughs facing
‘disproportionate cuts’.
‘It is a real concern for the future that those local
authority areas battling against the worst levels of alcohol-
related harm are the least likely to expect increased funding
for alcohol,’ said Alcohol Concern’s policy programme
manager Tom Smith. ‘Both treatment and prevention
services need to be given clear prioritisation and
responsibility must not be allowed to fall between the gaps
of local bodies and service’s remits.’
Meanwhile, the cost of drugs to treat alcohol
dependence topped £3m last year, according to figures from
the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC).
Alcohol dependence drugs cost the NHS £3.13m, up nearly 7
per cent on the previous year. Nearly 184,000 drugs were
dispensed in 2013, up almost 80 per cent on a decade ago.
Alcohol-related deaths are continuing to fall, however,
according to the latest Local Alcohol Profiles for England
(LAPE). National figures for alcohol-related mortality for
men are down 1.9 per cent since 2012 and more than 7 per
cent over the last five years, while for women the figures
have fallen by 1.4 per cent and 6.8 per cent respectively.
Stark regional variations continue, however, with around
150 local authority areas seeing an increase in deaths
since 2012.
A measure of change at www.alcoholconcern.org.uk
Statistics on alcohol – England, 2014 at www.hscic.gov.uk
Mortality figures at www.lape.org.uk
NEWS IN BRIEF
June 2014 |
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| 5
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Round-up
The pursuit of a ‘militarised and enforcement-led’ global
drugs strategy has resulted in ‘enormous negative outcomes
and collateral damage’, according to a report from the
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Among these are worldwide human rights abuses,
widespread violence in Latin America, Russia’s HIV
epidemic, corruption and political destabilisation in
Afghanistan and West Africa and ‘mass incarceration’ in
the US, says
Ending the drug wars
. The document includes
a call from five Nobel Prize economists for resources to be
redirected towards ‘effective, evidence-based policies
underpinned by rigorous economic analysis.’
Proven public health and harm reduction policies
should be prioritised, it says, with states allowed to pursue
new initiatives to determine what works and ‘rigorously
monitored’ policy and regulatory experiments encouraged.
The document calls on the UN to take the lead in
advocating a ‘new cooperative international framework
based on the fundamental acceptance that different
policies will work for different countries and regions.’
Among the report’s other signatories are ministers
from the governments of Guatemala and Colombia and
UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg. ‘The drug war’s
failure has been recognised by public health professionals,
security experts, human rights authorities and now some
of the world’s most respected economists,’ said the
report’s editor, John Collins. The most immediate task is
ensuring a sound economic basis for the policies, and then
to reallocate international resources accordingly.’
Ending the drug wars at www.lse.ac.uk
Time to change
direction on drugs
Council alcohol funding fears
Police stop and search powers are to be overhauled, home
secretary Theresa May has announced, with the Police and
Criminal Evidence Act code of practice revised to ‘make clear
what constitutes “reasonable grounds for suspicion”.’
Last year, a report from Release and the London School of
Economics and Political Science (LSE) found that black people
were more than six times more likely to be stopped and
searched for drugs than white people (
DDN
, September
2013, page 4). They were also more than twice as likely to be
charged if drugs were found and more than five times more
likely to face immediate jail if found guilty of possession.
Under the revised code, officers using their powers
improperly will be subject to ‘formal performance or
disciplinary proceedings’. While stop and search is
‘undoubtedly an important police power’, if misused it can
be counter-productive and damaging to community
relations, the home office stated.
National training for stop and search is to be reviewed,
with assessments of officers’ fitness to use the powers
introduced, while the government will also bring forward
legislation to make public access to stop and search records
a statutory requirement if forces fail to allow it voluntarily.
Nationally, only around 10 per cent of stop and searches
result in an arrest, while HM Inspectorate of Constabulary
found that nearly 30 per cent of the stop and search records
they examined ‘did not contain reasonable grounds’ for a
search. ‘Nobody wins when stop and search is misapplied,’
said Theresa May. ‘It is a waste of police time. It is unfair,
especially to young black men. It is bad for public confidence
in the police.‘
Stop and search
reform pledged