December 2015 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 13
DRUG ABUSE AND HIV
continue to
present profound challenges to the
health of gay people, but a climate of
moral panic and blaming the gay scene
is counterproductive…We need a more
sophisticated analysis of the reasons
driving high-risk behaviour among
some gay men. Without this under-
standing, any future NHS responses to
chemsex are destined to fail.
Marco Scalvini,
Guardian
, 10 November
A MAJOR REASON
for the
media coverage of chemsex
as destructive is that most
of the first-hand accounts of
the experience come from
people who present it as a
problem at sexual health
clinics. The media then select
the most horrifying of
these…. As for the
connection between
chemsex and HIV
transmission, there is little
academic consensus on this.
Jamie Hakim,
Independent
,
25 November
ADDRESSING CHEMSEX
-related
morbidities should be a public health
priority. However, in England funding
for specialist sexual health and drugs
services is waning and commissioning
for these services is complex. English
sexual health services tend to be open
access, with costs charged back to
Safeguarding
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‘THIS FOCUS ON CHILD PROTECTION
is a good
thing – but there are real consequences of
focusing on it too much,’ said Karen
Hammond of the Centre for Alcohol and Drug
Studies, speaking at the recent
HIT Hot Topics
conference in Liverpool.
Hammond gave insight into the changing
role of public health nurses in relation to
mothers who used drugs – and described a
very fragile relationship. Having access to
families had been seen as ‘an opportunity for
surveillance’, with nurses expected to take on
an additional social work role, reporting on
cases that they felt were high risk.
The effect of this could be to breed an
‘atmosphere of fear’ and ‘erode an already
fragile trust’, denying these women a valuable
source of support.
One-to-one interviews with public health
nurses who worked with this group of
women revealed problems with engagement:
women were tending to withdraw from
contact with nurses, for fear of having their
children removed.
This failure to keep appointments was being
blamed on their engagement with drugs and
the notion of their ‘chaotic lives’, rather than ‘the
cycle of fear and mistrust that had been created’.
The consistent issue to be highlighted was
lack of training; many of the nurses had only
had child protection as a training route to deal
with these issues and thought they only
needed to know about the names of drugs.
This gave them perceptions such as: ‘addiction
results in a loss of control and affects the
ability to parent properly’; and ‘recovery is
equated with abstinence’ – so any continued
use signaled danger to them.
Hammond relayed some typical comments
from the interviews with nurses: ‘The drug use
takes over – that’s all they think about,’ and
‘They want to stop it but they can’t – the pull is
just too strong.’ Children were also still deemed
to be at risk when they were not actually
present during drug-taking, and had been left
with family members. ‘Nurses still thought [the
mothers] wouldn’t manage their intoxication
and it would end in chaos,’ she said.
‘Overall it was quite shocking – the belief
that drug use makes you a bad mother,’ said
Hammond. ‘We need to not only teach
parents about risks, but also be able to
facilitate some critical self-reflection that’s
lacking at the moment.
‘Professional practice should reflect the
evidence base, not political or moral frame-
works,’ she said. ‘What we really need is to
dismantle prohibition – but in the meantime
we need to recognise that the way we’re
dealing with it makes it worse.’
During the question time at the end of this
session, a woman from Belfast commented: ‘I
asked for help and my children were taken off
me. You’re damned if you do ask for help and
damned if you don’t.’
More from Hit Hot Topics in our next issue
How can we tackle child safeguarding without risking
disengagement?
DDN
hears a cautionary perspective
from public health nurses
‘I asked for
help and my
children
were taken
off me.
You’re
damned if
you do ask
for help and
damned if
you don’t.’
local authorities. Drug services tend to
be authority specific with users
having to attend a service within their
borough of residence. Despite the
different funding streams, creating
centres of excellence for sexual health
and drug services could be a cost
effective solution to diminished
resources in both sectors.
BMJ
editorial, 3 November
AROUND THE WORLD
, about 25
countries including Australia, the
Czech Republic, Portugal and
Switzerland have initiated reform.
Even Iran’s theocracy brought in
progressive harm-reduction measures
and has influential voices calling for
cannabis and opium legalisation.
Slowly but surely we are seeing the
end of stupid policies to prohibit drug
use that are not only stunningly
illiberal but damage users, families,
communities and entire countries.
Ian Birrell,
Independent
, 9 November
IF GOVERNMENTS
really want to limit
the harm from drugs – saving addicts’
lives, crushing dealers’ profits and
slashing the number of people who
take them in the first place – then they
must seize control of the market
themselves.
Economist
editorial, 7 November
IF PEOPLE
are going to use narcotics, it
is best they do so safely. Relaxing the
legislation on drug use, coupled with
access to injection rooms, really is our
only way forward.
Lorraine Courtney,
Irish Independent
,
6 November
WHAT DO MODERN TERRORISTS
have
in common? Yes, they are fanatical, and
usually (but not always) from ethnic
minorities. But there’s something else
very interesting. They are invariably on
mind-altering drugs, usually cannabis.
Peter Hitchens,
Mail on Sunday
,
22 November
The news, and the skews, in the national media
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