DOUBLE STRENGTH
London-based charities Blenheim CDP and
CASA have announced they are to merge,
allowing the new organisation to offer more
services and cover a wider geographical
area. ‘Joining together CASA’s alcohol
expertise with Blenheim CDP’s drug misuse
experience will result in a truly exceptional
organisation enabling us to cover a whole
spectrum of service provision,’ said
Blenheim CEO John Jolly. The full merger is
expected to be completed by next April.
A FLOP FOR STIFFY
A complaint about vodka liqueur products
Stiffy’s Jaffa Cake and Stiffy’s Kola Kubez
has been upheld by the Portman Group’s
Independent Complaints Panel for
‘inappropriately linking an alcohol product
with sexual success’. Manufacturers Stiffy’s
Shots Ltd, trading as VC2, had maintained
that ‘Stiffy’ referred to the nickname of a
person involved in the development of the
drinks rather than any sexual connotations.
‘Following this ruling and our enforcement
action, Stiffy’s products will be removed
from sale in their current form,’ said
Portman Group chief executive Henry
Ashworth.
HEAR, HEAR
Dumbartonshire-based confidential telephone
helpline HEAR (Help, Empathy, Advice,
Reassurance) is celebrating its third
anniversary. Designed by service users and
developed by West Dumbartonshire Council
in response to a need for out-of-hours
support, the service operates five evenings a
week, including Christmas Day. ‘I’ve been
with the service since it started, and took my
first call on Christmas Eve 2008,’ said phone
operative Scott. ‘A young girl was threatening
to kill herself, so distressed at being alone
because of her drug use. That call ended
well, and so far most calls have had very
positive outcomes.’
TESTING CALL
The number of people living with HIV in the
UK reached an estimated 91,500 last year,
according to new figures from the Health
Protection Agency (HPA). A quarter are
unaware of their infection, says the agency,
which is calling for HIV testing to be routinely
offered to anyone registering with a GP or
admitted to hospital in areas where infection
rates are high. The HPA has also released its
latest report on infections among injecting
drug users, Shooting up, which this year
focuses on infections caused by bacteria.
Available at www.hpa.org.uk
4 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| December 2011
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
The all-party Home Affairs Committee has
launched a ‘comprehensive review’ of UK drugs
policy, it has announced. The inquiry will examine
the effectiveness of 2010’s drug strategy, the
‘independence and quality’ of expert advice
received by the government, and the criteria used
to measure the efficiency of drug policies.
The committee will look at the extent to which the
recent strategy is a ‘fiscally responsible policy with
strategies grounded in science, health, security and
human rights’, in line with the recommendations of the
Global Commission on Drug Policy (
DDN
, June, page 4),
it states. Other areas of consideration will include the
challenges posed by ‘legal highs’, the cost effectiveness
of different policies to cut drug use and the potential
impact of the transfer of functions from the NTA to
Public Health England on treatment provision. Oral
evidence sessions will be held early next year.
A letter stressing the ‘urgent need to break the
taboo on rational discussion of drug policy reform’
has also been sent to the prime minister, the cabinet
and every member of the House of Lords and House
of Commons by drug policy think tank the Beckley
Foundation, with signatories including Jimmy Carter,
Yoko Ono and Sting.
Meanwhile, a temporary control power giving the
home secretary the authority to place an instant ban on
any substance deemed ‘potentially harmful’, pending
advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of
Drugs (ACMD), has now come into force. The orders
ban the unlawful importation, production and supply of
a temporary-class drug in the UK for 12 months.
Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Michael
Scholar, however, wrote to immigration minister Damian
Green last month, expressing concern that the
government had issued a ‘highly selective’ press release
about drug seizures by the UK Border Agency before
the publication of his organisation’s statistical bulletin on
seizure rates – which reports a decrease in 2010/11 – in
order to ‘generate positive news coverage’ and show
the UK Border Agency ‘in a good light’. If that were the
case, the letter states, it would be ‘highly corrosive and
damaging to public confidence in official statistics’.
Anyone interested in making a written submission to
the inquiry should do so by 10 January – full details at
http://bit.ly/vJt5yh
Seizures of drugs in England and Wales a – 2010/11
available at www.statistics.gov.uk
Parliament launches major
drug policy review
News in Brief
News |
Round-up
Rates of cocaine use have started to decline across
Europe, according to the 2011 annual report from the
European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug
Addiction (EMCDDA).
The countries with the most significant cocaine
problems – Spain, Italy, Denmark and the UK – all
reported a fall in ‘last-year’ use among 15 to 34-year-olds,
mirroring similar trends in the US and Canada. The UK,
however, remains the European country with the highest
rate of use among this age group.
With an average price of between 50 and 80 Euros per
gram, regular cocaine use may be a ‘less attractive option
in countries where austerity is now the order of the day’,
says the EMCDDA, although the drug remains the
continent’s most widely-used illicit stimulant, with around
17 per cent of those entering treatment reporting it as
their main problem substance.
Levels of heroin use have remained largely unchanged,
although there are still more than 1.3m regular opioid users
in the EU and Norway. Clients in treatment are generally
older, however, and the proportion reporting injecting is
also declining in most countries, with just 40 per cent of
those entering treatment for opioid problems regular
injectors. Around 700,000 opioid users received substitution
treatment in Europe in 2009, 50,000 more than in 2007,
although coverage continues to vary greatly.
Although drug use as a whole appears to be ‘relatively
stable’ across Europe, and cannabis use continues to decline
among young people, there are ‘new threats’ from the
rapidly evolving synthetic drugs market, and widespread
polydrug use, says the report, adding that European drug
policies and responses will need to adapt accordingly.
Thirty-nine new drugs have been reported this year via
the European early warning system (EWS), on top of the
41 notified to the EMCDDA and Europol last year (
DDN
,
June, page 5). Drug manufacturers are also playing ‘cat
and mouse’ with the authorities in terms of the imported
precursor chemicals used to synthesise the drugs, the
report states, using increasingly sophisticated techniques
to bypass regulations. These include synthesising
precursors from ‘pre-precursors’ or masking them as non-
controlled chemicals, which are then reconverted after
importation.
‘The fast moving and increasingly joined-up world we
live in is mirrored by an increasingly fast moving and
joined-up drug market which appears quick to adapt to
both threats and opportunities’, said EMCDDA director
Wolfgang Götz. ‘This is reflected not only in the sheer
number of new substances appearing on the market, but
also in their diversity and in how they are produced,
distributed and marketed. We need a proactive strategy
that allows us to rapidly identify new drugs and emerging
trends so that we can anticipate their potential
implications. We also need to coordinate our responses
across Europe as, without doing so, individual national
efforts are likely to prove ineffective. These two factors are
crucial if we are to stay ahead in this rapidly developing
game of cat and mouse’.
Annual report 2011: the state of the drugs problem in
Europe at www.emcdda.europa.eu
Cocaine use falls in time of austerity