happen. However it also called for supporting action on jobs, houses, mental health,
and a range of other crucial interventions which have not been delivered. The task
for the 2016 version is to continue to deliver evidence-based, recovery-focused
interventions, but to also overcome the strategy’s failures in the following areas
(see opposite for details):
• Drug-related deaths
• Jobs and houses
• Integrating prison and community
• Mental health
• ‘Locally led, locally owned’
Knitting all of this together would be health and wellbeing boards, which would
integrate the local authority’s concerns with the Clinical Commissioning Groups’
(CCGs) continuing responsibility for drug users’
physical and mental health, and
police and crime commissioners’
interest in the crime
Drug Strategy
14 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| December 2015
‘The ideal 2016 strategy would
look very like its predecessor –
the key difference being to
identify how to deliver the joined-
up services everyone has known
we need for at least 30 years.’
In a climate of austerity the
new drug strategy must
grow from our successes,
says
Paul Hayes
on behalf
of Collective Voice
LEANER
AND
N
ext month the government will begin its formal consultation to
inform the drug strategy due in March. So how far has the 2010
strategy delivered its aspirations, and what insights have the last five
years given us to help shape drug recovery for the rest of this
parliament?
In the 2010 strategy the home secretary set out an ambition to ‘reduce demand,
restrict supply, and support and achieve recovery’. The prime minister’s view at the end
of 2012 was that this had been achieved: ‘We have a policy which actually is working
in Britain,’ he said. ‘Drug use is coming down, the emphasis on treatment is absolutely
right and we need to continue with this to make sure we can really make a difference.’
Despite the day-to-day challenges of delivery and the uncertainty of future
funding following the spending review, we should not lose sight of the big picture –
what the PM said was right in 2012, and remains right now. The policy is broadly
achieving its aims and has been built on three pillars: a powerful positive narrative,
endorsement of the clinical evidence, and a commitment to continue to invest.
The strategy successfully reframed the treatment system around recovery as an
organising principle. The balance between ambition and evidence established a
new consensus about best practice, steering clinicians to use opiate substitution
therapy (OST) to provide a gateway to recovery for everyone who could take
advantage of this opportunity. It also gave a secure place to build motivation and
capacity to change for those not yet able to take the next step. This enabled the
treatment system to promote recovery at the same time as continuing to deliver
crime reduction and public health benefits – the bedrock of the success described
by David Cameron, which it would be extremely unwise to unpick.
Crucially the government also backed the strategy with cash. Despite the
extreme pressure on the public sector, funding committed to delivering the drug
strategy was protected as part of NHS expenditure.
The 2010 strategy got the big calls right. It shaped a new ambition for the sector
focused on the individual drug user, reached consensus on how to best achieve this
together with wider societal benefits, and gave the resources to enable it to
