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drinkanddrugsnews
| August 2013
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
LETTERS
FALSE DICHOTOMY
In her open letter to Anna Soubry MP
(
DDN
, July, page 8) Dr Chris Ford draws
an erroneous and largely unhelpful
distinction between treating drug
misuse as a health issue and treating
it as a criminal justice issue.
In peer-reviewed research evaluating
the impact of major drug enforcement
operations on street-level drug markets it
was found that the proportion of drug
users contacting a methadone prescribing
clinic increased massively from 30.2 per
cent in the weeks in advance of the
operations to 84.3 per cent in the weeks
following the police operations
(McGallagly and McKeganey 2012).
This research shows that drug
enforcement operations can have a
welcome positive impact on
encouraging drug users into drug
treatment. Instead of claiming that drug
use is either a health or a criminal
justice issue we need effective joint
working between health and criminal
justice agencies and a recognition that
both domains have an equally
important contribution to make in
tackling drug misuse.
Ref: McGallagly, J., McKeganey, N.
(2013) Does robust drug enforcement
lead to an increase in drug users?
Drugs: Education, Prevention, and Policy,
2013, Vol. 20, No. 1: Pages 1-4.
Neil McKeganey Ph.D, director, Centre
for Drug Misuse Research, Glasgow
SELF-HELP SALVATION
It is ridiculous for Ford and Soubry to
be battling it out over whether addiction
is a criminal or a health issue. It is the
failure of the law and of medicine to
understand and cure addiction that
gives neither of them the right to even
have an opinion.
Addiction is simply a current
condition initiated by an individual
making the mistake of choosing to use
an addictive substance in an attempt to
solve a ‘personal’ problem. It is
straightforwardly a personal decision,
made alone or in agreement with
advice, which proves to be a mistake,
and for which medical ‘treatment’ has
never been an answer. Nor, as history
shows, can criminal punishment resolve
the country’s addiction problems.
When the coalition chose as the first
strand of their 2010 drug strategy
‘reducing demand’, they knew what they
were doing, because they were focusing
on the source of our addiction problems
– the individual addict. As they move
towards ‘localism’ they are again
focusing on the individual addicts that all
inevitably exist in their local community.
It follows that reducing demand is
achieved solely and only by curing
individual addicts, and this is just not
occurring other than sporadically as a
result of medical treatment or criminal
labelling or trying to restrict supply.
But it can be achieved by recognising
that life is a do-it-for-yourself activity,
that deciding to use drugs is also a do-
it-for-yourself activity and that quitting
addiction is most often achieved on a
self-help basis.
Seventy to 75 per cent of addicts
who have used for three days, three
weeks, three months, three years or 30
years have tried, often daily, to quit and
have failed – but still want to quit.
All they lack is the knowledge of how
to attain lasting relaxed abstinence, and
we know from the results of addiction
recovery training delivered since 1966,
and now at 169 centres (including prison
units) in 49 countries, that 70-plus per
cent can cure themselves.
So lets give addicts and the drug
strategy a chance – by training drunks
and addicts to cure themselves.
Kenneth Eckersley, CEO, Addiction
Recovery Training Services (ARTS)
35 YEARS STRONG
Norwich charity NORCAS are celebrating
35 years of working in the region with a
huge birthday party – all welcome!
Since 1978 when NORCAS opened
its first alcohol service in Norwich they
have gone on to provide drug, gambling
and welfare rights services for many
thousands of people across East Anglia.
Now working in partnership with national
substance misuse charity Phoenix
Futures under the name Phoenix +
NORCAS, the party will be an opportunity
to hear inspirational stories of recovery,
meet staff, volunteers and service
users, past and present and to learn
more about the plans for the future.
The party to be held on 22 August
at OPEN, 20 Bank Plain, Norwich NR2
‘The proportion of drug
users contacting a
methadone prescribing
clinic increased massively
from 30.2 per cent in the
weeks in advance of the
operations to 84.3 per cent
in the weeks following...
police operations.’