Why NHS spending cannot be cut

Much comment since the Budget on how David Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne, have missed a trick in ring fencing spending on the National Health Service from the coming cuts ...

Many years ago, I attended a lunch with Professor Richard Doll, the physiologist credited with establishing the link between smoking and lung cancer.

Also at the lunch was a then prominent member of the anti-smoking lobby, who complained bitterly about the health costs to the nation of this life threatening habit.

To the contrary, replied Professor Doll. Smokers tend to die young before they become a burden on the taxpayer, and net net therefore cost rather less in healthcare than someone who lives to a ripe old age.

The same argument might be made about obesity, which costs the nation heavily while the sufferer is still alive but saves mightily in later years because of premature death ...

Telegraph  25 June 2010    Budget June 2010

Watchdog backs a minimum price for alcohol

Diageo, on the hand, does not.

The recommendation from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is in guidance on reducing the harm from excess drinking.

NICE says about one in four adults is drinking too much and damaging, or at least risking, their health ...

It says in 2005 alcohol consumption caused nearly 15,000 deaths. The watchdog puts the annual cost to the NHS at over £2bn, and it concludes that misuse may be linked to 1.2 million violent incidents a year ...

Simon Litherland of Diageo GB said: "Yet again it is disappointing to see continued support for minimum pricing despite no credible empirical evidence that it would be an effective measure in reducing alcohol-related harm." ...

BBC NEWS  02 June 2010

Alcohol Concern

Drinks industry too close to power, say MPs

Tesco backs minimum price for alcohol

Britain – a land fit for gamblers

It is New Labour's undeniable legacy: it has made Britain a land fit for gamblers anonymous.

Today, no event is quite real until Corals or William Hill have opened a book on its outcome.

There can be few other countries where the government has shown such a cheerful inconsistency in its attitude towards social policy. For those passing laws on our behalf, lighting a cigarette in a public place is a shameful, anti-social activity, while gambling, which many would say is as harmful and addictive, is positively encouraged.

Not long ago, Brown suggested that Britain needed a national motto ... "It could be you" would fit the bill perfectly.

Few propaganda campaigns of recent times can have been as successful as the one promoting a fantasy of overnight wealth based on chance.

The National Lottery has changed the way we behave, and its grip increases ... Global and Gaming Consultants have just reported that, even as the economy plummeted last year and unemployment rose, there was a 3.9 per cent rise in money spent on the lottery ...

It is a wonderful, reassuring drug, available to all on a regular basis, encouraged by government, promoted by the BBC, providing twice a week a moment of brief, blissed-out hope ... throwing your money away has been democratised.

In this bright new dawn of permissiveness, it is not only acceptable but it is almost obligatory to gamble ...

Independent  23 Apr 2010

Libertarianism

Critical alcohol review hidden by mephedrone row

A good day to bury bad news?

A report highly critical of the Government's alcohol strategy was published quietly the same day that a ban on the recreational drug mephedrone was recommended ...

"The ACMD has already made known its concerns that the Government did not go to consultation on its alcohol strategy, and we believe the Government should take a more pro-active approach towards discouraging the culture of excessive drinking and promoting the 'less risky drinking' message," it says.

The proposal to switch from measures of volume to measures of alcohol is aimed to halt the trend of serving wine in larger glasses.

The report says: "Nowadays, even a small glass of wine represents a large quantity of alcohol, and this encourages ever greater quantities of alcohol to be consumed."

Independent  19 Apr 2010

Libertarianism

How Britain failed to kick its drug problem

Labour admits it is no closer to beating addiction and crime despite 13 years of trying ...

Measures to reduce drug use by young offenders have had only limited impact and ministers admit that they still do not know how best to combat the wider problems associated with addiction and crime.

The cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) described the Government's failure to evaluate the success or failure of its £1.2bn-a-year strategy as "unacceptable".

The MPs found there were 330,000 problem users of heroin and crack cocaine who cost society £15bn a year, with crime accounting for £13.9bn of that ...

Independent  07 April 2010    

'Bird Brain' - pressured by the corporate media into a knee-jerk reaction - is to rush a ban on mephodrone through Parliament before the election.

There is, of course, no pressure from the media for a ban on an equally dangerous drug which happens to be legally available at stupid prices in your local supermarket.

According to Alcohol Concern there will - on average - be 24 alcohol-related deaths in the next 24 hours!

The idea of implementing a grown-up drugs policy does not even get debated.

The line of travel is that supply goes underground, and another 'front' is opened in the failed 'war on drugs'.

Mephedrone use 'can cause impotence'

Mephedrone to be banned and made class B drug after link to 25 deaths

Home secretary Alan Johnson to rush ban on legal high 'meow meow' through parliament despite resignation of drugs adviser ...

The legal high drug mephedrone will be banned within weeks, Alan Johnson, the home secretary, announced today.

Emergency legislation classifying mephedrone as a class B drug comes after Johnson's expert drug advisers disclosed that the drug has been implicated in 25 deaths in England and Scotland.

The ban is expected to gain cross-party support to be rushed through both houses of parliament in the four remaining sitting days before the general election.

The decision to push ahead with legislation comes despite the resignation of a further member of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which left a legal question mark.

Johnson has brushed aside the effects of the latest resignation, that of Dr Polly Taylor, a consultant veterinary surgeon, whose decision to quit leaves the ACMD inquorate and technically unable to make a recommendation to the home secretary ...

Guardian  29 Mar 2010

Mephedrone ban prompts latest drugs council resignation

Eric Carlin quits over mephedrone

Eric Carlin's letter of resignation

'Meow meow' review may be hampered after drug adviser quits

One death every hour new alcohol stats confirm

Like all drugs, miaow-miaow should be legal

In the current regime of prohibition, silence and lies, the obvious response to these tragic deaths is to ban miaow-miaow.

It is an absurdity to have one legal, dangerous drug, when all others are prohibited.

Except alcohol. Oh, and tobacco. And methadone, of course, but that’s different, apparently, because the State’s the dealer.

So ban mephedrone, and then the kids who want to get high will be forced back to their usual haunts, of street corners and alleyways.

Their dealers will be delighted to welcome them back into the fold and be given a chance to practice what a legitimate business would call “cross-selling” ...

Times  19 Mar 2010

Murder in Mexico brings the drug war home

Drugs: towards a global tolerance regime

Professor Nutt received his ton of bricks, but seems to be emerging all the better for the experience. He will now be able to present his views, as a professional scientist, without fear of retribution.

The prohibition on open debate has not yet disappeared, but it is likely steadily to crumble. It is hard to envisage any future government being in a position to prevent high profile professionals from joining in the debate on drugs policy.

We should welcome that, for two reasons.

The first is simply the absurdities and costs of prohibition, and the need to find less damaging ways of dealing with the inevitability of drug consumption and trading.

The second is that we are likely to get a much more sensible debate if the professionals play a major role. The combination of prohibition and intimidation by government means that, to date, the public case for reform has been made principally by libertarians.

They frame it in terms of ‘legalisation’. The language is wrong. The implication that governments might actively give legal blessing to chemicals that clearly do often damage human health and welfare can only solidify support for prohibition ...

openDemocracy  22 Jan 2010

New code on alcohol sales to include ban on drinking games

Licensing rules rewritten to target binge drinking, but ban on bulk discounts at stores has been dropped ...

The new mandatory conditions, to be published today, include:

• A ban on "irresponsible" promotions such as "all you can drink for £10", women- drink-free deals, speed drinking competitions and "dentist's chairs".

• Ensuring free tap water is available.

• Ensuring all those who sell alcohol check the ID of anyone who looks under 18.

• Ensuring establishments make available a choice between a single and double measure of spirits and a small and large glass of wine ...

shemnel
19 Jan 2010, 1:06AM

A few rambling musings, if I may indulge your time.....

- The measures outlined above simply target the public, punitive measures almost. Where are the advertising restrictions? The laws on supermarkets? etc.

- Once again, the reasons of why people want to get drunk are ingnored. Alas, people will always go a bit far but in our society there are deep rooted problems in many socio-economic backgrounds, turning many to drink and escapism.

- Each country i have been to where licensing laws are very relaxed (ie nearly all night), there is less trouble, less aggro and generally less pressure to get drunk, after all, thats what people are going to do regardless.

Somebody mentioned living for the weekend. We live in a rat race country. People are sick of it and have been for years. The weekend is their getaway. Getting pissed is simply getting away from it, the job, the life, the mortgage, the taxes, the bills, the lack of money, you are unshackled for that evening of pure self over-indulgence.

The way our country is has rammed money as the 'be all and end all of' of existing down our throats - not rich = not cool, not successful, worthless.

You may think this all far fetched but essentially people are made to feel rubbish by the current media/government/social pressures and this is there escape. For that night they are care free.

HowardD
19 Jan 2010, 11:40AM

Anyone else hear the public health evangelist, Dr Alan Maryon-Davis, on radio yesterday? I was chilled to the core.

He produced a list of more bans and restrictions the government "must" introduce over the next few years, from banning smoking in cars to jacking up drink prices to banning trans-fats in food.

His rationale was that the public is "ready" for such measures.

No, doctor. If the public is ready, it is only because they have been beaten senseless by the torrent of laws already imposed by this government. Like the punch-drunk boxer, they have lost the will to fight and will lie there uncomplainingly while more blows rain down.

We have in effect handed over our autonomy as individuals to an all-seeing, all-knowing government.

How did we reach the tragic state where we now meekly accept any and every new law designed to curtail our behaviour or limit our choices?

The time has come to ask some fundamental questions about the state's relationship with society. As it controls ever more minutiae of our lives, so our ability to behave like adults is diminished, and so the vicious circle is perpetuated as the state tells us we need more supervision and regulation.

It is most horrible development in my lifetime, for sure.

Guardian  19 Jan 2010

MPs call for clampdown on alcohol misuse

MPs have called for a fundamental overhaul of government policy to curb excessive drinking.

A minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol, to curb excessive drinking in England, could save over 3,000 lives a year, the Health Select Committee said.

Its scathing report accused ministers of paying more attention to the drinks industry's views than health experts.

It is estimated alcohol abuse in England and Wales kills 40,000 people and costs the economy £55bn every year.

The report also called for a rise in duty on spirits and white cider, mandatory health warnings on labels, and stricter regulation of alcohol advertising and promotion ...

BBC NEWS  08 Jan 2010

Drinks industry too close to power, say MPs

Government has failed to control drinks industry

Record numbers of teenagers are receiving help for drug and alcohol problems, but the number of those undergoing counselling for heroin and crack use is falling, official figures show.

A total of 24,053 under-18s in England were treated in 2008-09, according to statistics from the NHS National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA). That was 150 up on the previous year, suggesting that demand for specialist services such as counselling and harm reduction is levelling off, said the NTA.

Almost nine in 10 of those got help for problems associated with their use of cannabis (12,642) or alcohol (8,799) ...

Guardian  23 Dec 2009

Teenage drug and alcohol use in England

The political takeover of the ACMD (Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs) started with the former home secretary, David Blunkett, in 2001.

His unshakeable assertion that cannabis should be downgraded to class C fortunately coincided with the scientists' perspective, but the political die was cast.

The U-turn on cannabis was long telegraphed by the Brownite faction; Ed Balls, speaking on election night 2005, said Labour had to learn from its mistakes, which were, "cannabis … Iraq". One assumes that short list was not in order of priority.

Ministers have blundered into this complex arena with a tabloid view of how to "fix a policy", oblivious of pesky irritations like scientific evidence.

According to an old hand at the Home Office, the advisory council was "historically the driving force behind the drugs strategy". By 2007, the council was deliberately marginalised by Jacqui Smith and its secretariat pushed out to an area far from influence on drug legislation.

Since the publication of the disputed cannabis and ecstasy reports, officials have been "banned from speaking to council members". They are forced to meet officials surreptitiously in bars and restaurants around Westminster.

No wonder Nutt and his colleagues are resentful; ministers had created a form of intellectual apartheid.

The ACMD felt sufficiently embolded by this slight to mock the government's 10-year drug strategy launched in 2008, describing the highly-selective use of statistics as, "self-congratulatory and disappointing" ...

It is often overlooked that the ACMD is a legal body; if ministers wished to abolish it, they would need to write a new set of laws. In the short term, Alan Johnson will struggle to find more than a handful of scientists who agree with him on cannabis classification.

The Home Office has certainly underestimated David Nutt's media skills, as well as his tenacity.

As a psychiatrist, Professor Nutt may be trying to get his patient, the general public, past the hysterical irrational stage into a calmer state of reflection.

This task has been made impossible by politicians and columnists who appear still to prefer panic to reasoned argument ...

Guardian 02 November 2009

Three more members of drugs advisory panel resign

Johnson 'misled MPs over adviser'

Scientific adviser backs sacked drug 'tsar'

The UK's former chief drugs adviser has accused Gordon Brown of reclassifying cannabis for political reasons ...

Prof Nutt told the BBC the government had ignored advice on cannabis "on the whim of the prime minister".

"Until Gordon Brown took office there has never been a recommendation about drug classification from the council that has been rejected by government," he said.

"Gordon Brown comes into office and soon after that he starts saying absurd things like cannabis is lethal... it has to be a Class B drug. He has made his mind up.

"We went back, we looked at the evidence, we said, 'No, no, there is no extra evidence of harm, it's still a Class C drug.'

"He said, 'Tough, it's going to be Class B.'"

Prof Nutt said drug laws should not be influenced "petty party politics" and compared them to interest rates, which are set by the Bank of England not the government.

In the same way, he said, an independent committee should be set up to rule on drug classifications.

"There's no point in having drug laws that are meaningless and arbitrary just because politicians find it useful and expedient occasionally to come down hard on drugs.

"That's undermining the whole purpose of the drugs laws." ...

BBC NEWS  31 October 2009

The cannabis conundrum

Professor David Nutt, the government's chief drug adviser, has been sacked a day after claiming that ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.

Nutt incurred the wrath of the government when he claimed in a paper that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than many illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis ...

Richard Garside, director of the centre for crime and justice, said Nutt's briefing paper gave an insight into what drugs policy might look like if it was based on the research evidence rather than political or moral positioning.

Garside added: "I'm shocked and dismayed that the home secretary appears to believe that political calculation trumps honest and informed scientific opinion. The message is that when it comes to the Home Office's relationship with the research community honest researchers should be seen but not heard.

"The home secretary's action is a bad day for science and a bad day for the cause of evidence-informed policy making."

Guardian  30 October 2009

Professor Nutt's sacking shows how toxic the drugs debate has become

Shooting up the messenger

'More to quit' in drug advice row

Debate over cannabis classification

The row over the reclassification of cannabis has been reignited after the government's chief drug adviser accused ministers of "devaluing" the evidence.

Professor David Nutt, of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, says it does not cause major health issues.

He accused ex-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith of "devaluing" scientific research. The Home Office said his view did not reflect that of the government.

In 2004 cannabis went from class B to C. In 2008, Ms Smith returned it to B ... Prof Nutt used a lecture at King's College in London and briefing paper to attack what he called the "artificial" separation of alcohol and tobacco from illegal drugs ...

DRUG CLASSIFICATIONS
Class A: Ecstasy, LSD, heroin, cocaine, crack, magic mushrooms, amphetamines (if prepared for injection)
Class B: Amphetamines, Cannabis, Methylphenidate (Ritalin), Pholcodine
Class C: Tranquilisers, some painkillers, Gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB), Ketamine.

BBC NEWS  29 October 2009

Drug addicts desperate to kick the habit are forced to commit criminal offences to get a place in rehab, the father of singer Amy Winehouse told MPs today.

Mitch Winehouse, who is making a documentary on drug use, was giving evidence to the home affairs select committee on the cocaine trade. He said drug users struggling to get clean had to wait at least a year for treatment while addicts committing other crimes were often given places in residential rehabilitation centres ...

(He) said he had heard stories of people trying to steal their way into rehab after finding themselves unable to get treatment through the normal channels.

"Anecdotally, people are definitely committing offences so they can have a chance, and it's only a chance, of receiving treatment," he said. "The biggest impact on families is that there is very little help available to them, especially if their relative is a non-offending addict.

"Their first port of call will be the GP and then they will refer them on to the local health authority.

"The problem that we have found in our research in London is that there is a period of a year before any treatment can be given. It's very difficult, and the reason for this is the majority of funding is taken up by the criminal justice system." ...

Guardian  20 October 2009

Gary Sutton, Release's head of drug services, says places providing prescription heroin enable local authorities to get some of the most vulnerable users into rehab. "Drug consumption rooms particularly benefit the chaotic and homeless user and gets them off the streets," he says. "[Pharmaceutical heroin] is not a cheap drug to get your hands on, but where it has been extensively trialled – in the Netherlands and Switzerland – all the evidence shows that remission rates among users, after about two or three years, is surprisingly high."

Independent  14 September 2009

An injection of common sense

The war on drugs is a failed policy that has injured far more people than it has protected. Around 14,000 people have died in Mexico's drug wars since the end of 2006, more than 1,000 of them in the first three months of this year.

Beyond the overflowing morgues in Mexican border towns, there are uncounted numbers who have been maimed, traumatised or displaced. From Liverpool to Moscow, Tokyo to Detroit, a punitive regime of prohibition has turned streets into battlefields, while drug use has remained embedded in the way we live.

The anti-drug crusade will go down as among the greatest follies of modern times ... the fact is that the costs of drug prohibition now far outweigh any possible benefits the policy may bring.

It is time for a radical shift in policy. Full-scale legalisation, with the state intervening chiefly to regulate quality and provide education on the risks of drug use and care for those who have problems with the drugs they use, should now shape the agenda of drug law reform ...

John Gray  13 September 2009

'We need to get people away from dealers'

All alcohol advertising and marketing should be banned, the British Medical Association said on Tuesday, as it criticised the government’s “cosy relationship” with the drinks industry.

The BMA believes a ban would help to curb binge drinking, particularly among the young, and reduce the costs to the NHS, as well as stem crime ...

Other BMA proposals include a reduction in licensing hours and tax increases on alcohol set above the rate of inflation.

Such measures, which are already being introduced in Scotland, where smoking in public places was banned before England – would help to reduce per-capita consumption, Dr Nathanson said. “South of the border the tragedy is that the alcohol industry has too much influence.”

The BMA cited estimates that alcohol-related harm costs employers in England £6.4bn to £7.3bn, with crime and disorder costs of £7.3bn and healthcare costs of £1.7bn to £2.8bn.

The government said: “We’re working harder than ever to reduce alcohol harm — but it’s not always right to legislate.”

FT  08 September 2009

BMA

Fernando Henrique Cardoso urges global decriminalisation of cannabis use ...

"After decades of overflights, interdictions, spraying and raids on jungle drug factories, Latin America remains the world's largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana," Cardoso writes. "It is producing more and more opium and heroin. It is developing the capacity to mass produce synthetic drugs. Continuing the drugs war with more of the same is ludicrous." ...

Danny Kushlick of Transform, which campaigns for drug liberalisation, said Cardoso's intervention illustrated the human cost of efforts to combat the drugs trade on often poor and underdeveloped producer countries:

"Until this problem is taken up as a development issue it's not going to move anywhere. The default position is that this is a problem of addiction, but people have completely missed the point of the war on drugs, that the vastly detrimental effects are largely in production and transit.

If you look at a nation state like Guinea Bissau, which was a fragile state before and now is a fragile narco-state, that is a prime example of the vulnerability of developing countries to the fact that these drugs are incredibly expensive."

Observer  06 September 2009

A government policy to fine drunken troublemakers up to £2,500 under a new system of "alcohol asbos" introduced today has been rubbished by magistrates whose job it is to impose them.

The Home Office has announced that courts can now ban anyone aged 16 and over from drinking in certain pubs and bars and particular public areas and entering off-licences if they are regularly antisocial or commit crime while drunk. Offenders breaching the new "drinking banning orders", which last between two months and two years, will be fined. Anyone who is subject to an order will be referred to a "positive behaviour intervention course" to address their alcohol misuse, which will cost offenders up to £250 each.

But the Magistrates' Association, which represents 28,000 volunteer magistrates, said the orders duplicate existing legislation and are unlikely to help solve problems caused by drunkenness on Britain's streets ...

... a senior officer from a police force covering an urban area told the Guardian that unless the orders included mandatory daily testing for alcohol, they would have little impact. He said he and other colleagues in the leadership of British policing were becoming increasingly fed up with government initiatives:

"There's a never ending series of announcements, and not one thing has changed," he said.

Guardian  31 August 2009

Alcohol-related hospital admissions up by a third

SNP accused of drink crackdown by stealth

Drug offences have increased in virtually all the top 25 most deprived areas of the country, with some seeing rates rise four fold.

In a speech in London, Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, warns a world of drug gangs, deprivation and organised crime, like that depicted in The Wire, is now rife in the UK.

It is the latest attack on Labour’s record in tackling poverty and crime as the Conservatives continue their raid on their opposition core support.

It is part of a week of speeches and reports designed to prove to working-class voters that only the Conservatives are willing to tackle social inequality.

Figures show 22 of the 25 most deprived areas saw drug offences rise between 2002/03 and 2007/08, with half witnessing increases above the national average.

Salford, Greater Manchester, saw offences increase 312 per cent while Hackney, north London, saw them rise 259 per cent.

Mr Grayling said "culture of deprivation, harm, addiction and failure that is a feature of the worst US urban areas” is now crossing the Atlantic ...

Telegraph  25 August 2009

Tories claim poor being let down

Tory vow to fix 'broken Britain'

Tories attack school poverty gap

Citizen and the state

Two so-called "party" drugs and a man-made cannabis substitute will be banned by the end of the year, the Home Office has announced.

At the moment, these "legal highs" are sold openly across the UK and on the internet, but ministers say they are an "emerging threat".

The two drugs, known as BZP and GBL, have been linked to a number of deaths ...

BBC NEWS  24 August 2009

DrugScope

Transform

• Despite the billions spent each year on proactive and reactive drug law enforcement, the punitive prohibitionist approach has consistently delivered the opposite of its stated goals.
  
  The Government’s own data clearly demonstrates drug supply and availability increasing; use of drugs that cause the most harm increasing; health harms increasing; massive levels of crime created at all scales leading to a crisis in the criminal justice system; and illicit drug profits enriching criminals, fuelling conflict and destabilising producer and transit countries from Mexico to Afghanistan.
  
  This is an expensive policy that, in the words of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has also created a raft of negative ‘unintended consequences’.



• The UK Government specifically claims the benefits of any move away from prohibition towards legal regulation of drug markets would be outweighed by the costs.
  
  No such cost-benefit analysis, or even a proper Impact Assessment of existing enforcement policy and legislation has ever been carried out here or anywhere else in the world.
  
  Yet there are clear Government guidelines that an Impact Assessment should be triggered by amongst other things, a policy going out to public consultation or when ‘unintended consequences’ are identified, both of which have happened with drug policy in recent years.



• Alternative approaches - involving established regulatory models of controlling drug production, supply and use - have not been considered or costed.
  
  The limited cost effectiveness analysis of current policy that has been undertaken has frequently been suppressed. In terms of scrutinizing major public policy and spending initiatives, current drug policy is unique in this regard.



• The generalisations being used to defend continuation of an expensive and systematically failing policy of drugs prohibition, and close down a mature and rational exploration of alternative approaches, are demonstrably based on un-evidenced assumptions.



• This paper is an attempt to begin to redress these failings by comparing the costs and benefits of the current policy of drug prohibition, with those of a proposed model for the legal regulation of drugs in the UK.
  
  We also identify areas of further research, and steps to ensure future drugs policy is genuinely based on evidence of what works.



• This initial analysis demonstrates that a move to legally regulated drug supply would deliver substantial benefits to the Treasury and wider community, even in the highly unlikely event of a substantial increase in use.

Transform  April 2009

The number of women being admitted to hospital for alcohol poisoning has almost doubled in the past five years, according to official statistics that suggest binge-drinking is placing acute pressures on the NHS.

Figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show 13,074 women in England were treated in 2008 compared with 6,691 in 2003, a rise of 95%. Over the same period, the number of men admitted to hospital for a similar complaint rose from 6,329 in 2003 to 10,904 last year, a 72% increase. Women and girls now represent more than half - 54% - of all admissions for alcohol poisoning ...

The disparity between genders appears to be particularly acute among teenagers. A total of 4,439 girls aged 14 to 17 were admitted to hospital for alcohol poisoning over the past five years, compared with 1,776 boys ...

Observer 22 March 2209

Alcohol is one of the main drivers of depression in the UK. Giving it up even for a short time would transform our lives ...

I think it's safe to say that this country has a drink problem. After a staggeringly dumb piece of legislation that let bars open longer, in the bizarrely misguided idea that this would turn us all into moderate Mediterranean-style sippers, the admissions to casualty are up, the violence is up, and it's costing the NHS (ie you and me) a fortune.

But in the current financial climate, I don't want to cough up any more for mobile police and ambulance teams in high streets, and accident and emergency doctors being tied up with abusive hen-nighters who can't hold their vodka.

One recent proposal was to raise the price of alcohol, which would be a reasonably good start, although it won't stop the determined ...

Anyway, none of this gets to the heart of the problem – which is of course not alcohol at all. We're very passive in this country. In France, we would have rioted long ago, about our housing situation and City fat cats, and more recently about pretty much everything. But no. Instead of setting fire to sheep, we just go to the pub and get hammered, only to wake up the next morning hungover, depressed, and emotionally castrated. Addicted to passive complaint, we shuffle through another day of insults to our wellbeing, and then go back to the pub.

So, here's my suggestion; that everyone in the UK gives up drinking. OK, not forever; maybe just for three months, or six. It would be an incredibly radical act, especially for women. It would create political wildfire as people finally wake up to the realities in their lives: the cons, the ripoffs, all the rubbish about being stakeholders and property owners and all the other pseudo-citizen nonsense.

Relationships would end, and many wouldn't even start. There would be a huge reduction in unwanted pregnancies and STIs. Casualty departments would echo like churches. Alcohol is one of the main drivers of depression in this country: this misery would evaporate overnight as people took back control of their lives. The NHS would be awash with cash. And think of the money we'd save.

Alas, this is almost Modest Proposal territory. We Brits are almost as self-righteous about our right to get plastered as we are about our right to eat really bad-quality food and then chuck it up all over the pavement. But I can dream ...

Guardian 18 March 2009

Pay more, drink less

Gordon Brown today rejected controversial proposals from the chief medical officer to establish a minimum price for alcohol, which would double the price of many beers and spirits.

The prime minister said that he would protect the interests of the "sensible majority of moderate drinkers" when responding to proposals from Sir Liam Donaldson for a minimum charge of 50p per unit of alcohol to be imposed on beer and wine.

At a news conference this morning in Downing Street, Brown said that the government had already taken action to tackle binge drinking and underage drinking. But he said that it was also important "to take action that is properly targeted and effective".

The prime minister went on: "We do not want the responsible, sensible majority of moderate drinkers to have to pay more or suffer as a result of the excesses of a small minority. And that's the context in which we look at the problems that the chief medical officer has raised." ...

Observer 16 March 2009

Chief medical officer vows to fight for minimum alcohol price

'Passive drinking' is blighting the nation

Portman Group 03 March 2009

With the global economy collapsing all around us, the last issue President Barack Obama wants to talk about is the ongoing War on Drugs. But if he doesn't – and fast – he may well have two collapsed and haemorrhaging countries on his hands. The first lies in the distant mountains of Afghanistan. The second is right next door, on the other side of the Rio Grande ...

When you criminalise a drug for which there is a large market, it doesn't disappear. The trade is simply transferred from chemists and doctors to gangs. In order to protect their patch and their supply routes, these gangs tool up – and kill anyone who gets in their way. You can see this any day on the streets of London or Los Angeles, where teen gangs stab or shoot each other for control of the 3,000 per cent profit margins on offer. Now imagine this process on a countrywide scale, and you have Mexico and Afghanistan today ...

... Terry Nelson was one of America's leading federal agents tackling drug cartels for over 30 years. He discovered the hard way that the current tactics are useless. "Busting top traffickers doesn't work, since others just do battle to replace them," he explains. But there is another way: "Legalising and regulating drugs will stop drug market violence by putting major cartels out of business. It's the one sure-fire way to bankrupt them, but when will our leaders talk about it?" ...

Drug addiction is always a tragedy for the addict – but drug prohibition spreads the tragedy across the globe. We still have a chance to take drugs back into the legal regulated economy, before it's too late for Mexico and Afghanistan and graveyards-full of more stabbed kids on the streets of Britain. Obama – and the rest of us – have to choose: controlled regulation or violent prohibition? Healthcare or warfare?

To join the fight to legalise drugs, good organisations to join are Transform or Stop the Drug War.

Johann Hari 11 February 2009

Stop the Drug War

Transform

Drinks firms should be forced to post warnings on alcohol ads as part of wide-ranging measures to cut binge drinking, the Government's official drugs advisers have warned.

Laws should also ban alcohol advertisements on television between 6pm and 9pm, and link taxes and prices to the strength of drinks, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs said.

The council ... backed the idea of labelling drinks to indicate how many units of alcohol it contained, the calorie content and a calorie comparison to an equivalent amount of food ...

A formal submission from the council to the Department of Health, expressed particular concern at "deep discounting" by supermarkets.

It warned: "Such cheap availability encourages bulk purchase and consumption. Of specific concern is that the pricing puts alcohol more within the budgets of young people" ...

The Independent 26 November 2008

The Home Secretary is upgrading cannabis from Class C to Class B, with harsher penalties. This is extraordinary considering that a year earlier she asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs what to do. They advised against reclassification. She disregarded their advice.

Why did the council come to their recommendation? And why are peers – crossbench, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour – supporting my motion calling on the government to delay implementing their policy pending a further review?

One reason for the council's considered view is the widespread use of cannabis: fully 30% of the British population have used cannabis, and in 2003, 38% of 15 and 16-year-olds in the UK had done so. Can it be sensible to condemn such a large tranche of the population to harsh criminal penalties?

A second crucial consideration is the fact that the public health impact of cannabis use is relatively modest. For example, 28.6% of fatal traffic accidents are thought to be due to alcohol. This compares with 2.5% for cannabis. To this we can add the important health effects of alcohol: violence and suicide, liver cirrhosis, mental illness, dependence/addiction and lasting effects on the foetus.

By striking contrast, Hall and colleagues find that the only important health effect of cannabis is dependence/addiction ...

Guardian 25 November 2008

It is the opiate of the affluent. At dinner parties across the country and in the VIP lounges of Britain's plushest clubs and bars, huddled masses of wealthy hedonists crouch over paper wraps filled with a crystallised tropane alkaloid known as cocaine. Tonnes of the "white stuff" are consumed each week. ...

It begins with the winding yellow mud trails carved into the heart of the interior that eventually give way to acres of coca plants, which make the cocaine. Vast areas have been burnt to make way for these plantations, protected by armed militias who think nothing of ringing their crops with landmines. The coca fields of Colombia are a human and environmental catastrophe ignored by the type of European recreational drug user who might buy Fair Trade coffee in the week but think nothing of snorting cocaine at the weekend.

That was the image that Colombia's Vice-President, Francisco Santos Calderón, wanted to plant in the minds of British cocaine users during a visit he made to Belfast yesterday. "Every time you consume one gram of cocaine you are destroying 4.4 square metres of Colombian rainforest," he said. "This is the message we need to get across." The Vice-President delivered his stark message in a speech to a drugs conference being held by the Association of Chief Police Officers. ...

The Independent 19 November 2008   

Bear with me, if you will, while I skim through a random selection of people who in one way or another were found in possession of Class A drugs in recent months.

Scott McEvoy, 24, from Liverpool - 40 months in jail. Alistair Oliver, 23, from Edinburgh - 29 months, ditto. Craig James, 23, from Swansea - three years. Rio Ross, 14 months, from Bristol - killed by an overdose of his mother's drugs. James McGlashan, 26, of no fixed address - fined £300. Former Royal Marine Vincent McGuire, 32, of Gloucestershire - three years' jail. Matthew Edward Dean, 20, of Cardiff - fined £100 with £60 court costs and a £15 victim surcharge.

And, as of this week, Hans Kristian Rausing, 45, and his wife Eva, 44, from Holland Park - a conditional caution and all charges dropped without a court appearance. With not even a £15 victim surcharge, £60 when multiplied by four, on account of their four young children.

The distinction is, of course, that the people in the second paragraph are just names plucked from the massed ranks of the oikish or the ordinary. Whereas the Rausings are some of the richest people on the planet, heirs to the multi-billion- pound Tetra Pak fortune ...

The Times 01 August 2008

Police are fighting a losing battle against drugs crime, with seizures having little impact on cutting supply or reducing demand, research suggests.

The UK Drug Policy Commission says despite the large sums of money spent tackling the problem, traditional police tactics are not working.

It says the £5.3bn British drugs market is too "fluid" for law enforcement agencies to cut supply.

It adds more should be done to reduce the effect of drugs on communities ...

BBC NEWS 30 July 2008

The relaxation of the licensing laws has failed to reduce drunken violence while costing taxpayers £100m, a report claimed today.

A survey by the Local Government Association (LGA) found that around seven in 10 police authorities, primary care trusts and councils had seen either no change or an increase in alcohol-related disorder.

And at the same time as adding to the cost to council taxpayers, the new licensing laws – which make it easier for pubs to stay open past 11pm – have stretched resources, with 86% of health authorities and 94% of councils reporting increased pressure.

The findings were based on responses from 51 local authorities, 49 primary care trusts and 20 police forces.

Around a third of primary care trusts said they had experienced a rise in alcohol-related incidents.

Meanwhile, half of police authorities reported that the 2003 Licensing Act had simply led to alcohol-related disorder occurring later at night than prior to the new rules. ...

Guardian 01 July 2008

The creation of drug-free prisons in England and Wales is too expensive and not a practical option with more than half the record 83,000 jail population misusing drugs, according to a consultants' report commissioned by justice and health ministers.

The study by PricewaterhouseCoopers released yesterday also says mandatory drug testing should be abandoned for individual prisoners as it is widely viewed by both inmates and staff as "open to manipulation", with clean urine samples often being used as a currency inside jails.

The review of the £75m a year drug treatment programme in prisons concludes that notable improvements in care have followed the doubling of investment in the last 10 years.

The consultants, however, add that treatment is fragmented between prisons and the community, there is little agreement on what it is trying to achieve, the evidence for some of the courses used is weak, and there is a lack of meaningful data to measure progress.

Extra funding for the treatment services in prisons was announced by ministers in March when an anodyne summary was released, but the full report was published yesterday after freedom of information requests. The prison population hit a record yesterday of 83,171 - up 140 in the past week. ...

Guardian 14 June 2008

A specialist squad is to be set up to help towns with the most drink-related hospital admissions fight their alcohol problems, the government will say.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson announced the formation of the National Alcohol Support Team during a speech on tackling health inequalities.

The 10 worst-affected towns or local authority areas across England will get targeted support by March next year. ...

BBC NEWS 09 June 2008

There are about 300 major drug importers into Britain, 3,000 wholesalers and 70,000 street dealers producing a turnover of £7-8bn a year, according to an internal Home Office estimate revealed today.

This official indication of the astonishing scale of the drugs trade in Britain, although very rough, has led Home Office researchers to calculate that by value it represents about a third of the size of the tobacco market in Britain and two-fifths of the trade in alcohol.

The estimates are contained in a Home Office research study published today based on prison interviews with 222 convicted high-level drug dealers. This reveals that about three-quarters of drug dealers attempt to grow their operations, enjoy mark-ups of 16,800% on heroin and 15,800% on cocaine, and now employ salaried staff as runners and storers.

The research also shows that prison is not seen as a serious deterrent and is only regarded as an "occupational hazard or an unlikely risk". A prison sentence meant handing an established enterprise onto an employee or colleague.

By contrast, recent asset recovery action under which drug trade proceeds are seized is regarded as a much bigger threat.

"People who are arrested are losing everything that they have - even the things they acquired through honest means," one convicted dealer told the researchers. ...

The study is published alongside a clutch of other Home Office research reports on the drugs situation in Britain.

They show that the number of problem drug users - those dependent on opiates such as heroin or cocaine or a number of drugs - has remained stable at around 332,000 in England and Wales in the past year. Drug prices have also continued to decline over time.

The government's drug harm index, which is its principal way of measuring the success of its strategy, was also published today and shows a further fall from 89.1 in 2004 to 83.4 in 2005.

The Home Office said this was largely due to further reductions in drug-related crime, most notably domestic and commercial burglaries, theft from cars, and shoplifting. A fall in drug-related hepatitis C cases however was more than offset by a rise in drug-related deaths from 1,495 in 2004 to 1,608 in 2005.

The Guardian 20 November 2007

North Wales police chief Richard Brunstrom has called for all drugs, including heroin, to be legalised because current policy is based on "dogma rather than evidence".

Brunstrom said the Misuse of Drugs Act should be repealed as the current UK drugs policy is based upon a "wholly outdated and thoroughly repugnant moralistic stance based upon rhetoric and dogma rather than a rational (and more ethical) philosophy".

He also pointed out that it is impossible to combat an industry worth an estimated 8 billion pounds a year in the UK. ...

Reuters 11 October 2007

KABUL (Reuters) - Britain, in charge of efforts in Afghanistan to stamp out narcotics, has not only failed to reduce drug production but has been unable to stop an increase in production, Afghan newspapers said on Monday. ...

Afghanistan produced 93 percent of the world's opium in 2007 and the industry also funds a growing Taliban insurgency, which British and other Western troops are struggling to contain ... several Afghan papers, including a state-controlled daily, said Britain was responsible for the failure to stop drugs.

"Britain leads international efforts against drug production and trafficking in Afghanistan. There has been large investment by this country for the annihilation and destruction of drugs," Daily Afghanistan said in an editorial.

"But unfortunately ... not only has there has been no reduction, but it has gone up year after year," it said ...

Reuters 22 October 2007

The binge-drinking saga has become an object lesson in chaotic British government. Labour ministers thought that the Licensing Act 2003 would strike electoral gold. People would be delighted at being able to drink when they liked. Pressed by the pub owners before the last election, Labour actually sent teenage voters text messages proclaiming, "Cldnt gve a XXXX 4 lst ordrs thn vte lbr on thrsday 4 extra time". ...

The cause has been an unrelated government policy, to lower taxes on alcohol and encourage young people to drink rather than use (untaxed) recreational drugs.

The street price of these drugs has fallen to the level of a cup of coffee, helped by the Government's refusal to regulate or tax the drugs market. Brewers and pub owners have been frantic to hold down the price of drink and "liberalise" the drink laws. They have succeeded.

The price of alcoholic drink in relation to average earnings is lower today than when Labour came to power. It is just half what it was in 1968. Consumption of alcohol per head has risen by 50 per cent. Happy hours, "all you can drink for £10" and free drinks for women have become an entertainment cult. ...

Simon Jenkins, The Times 24 January 2005

The government is to be urged to consider a controversial plan to reclassify drugs according to the harm they do. The new ranking system would see alcohol placed high on the scale because of its links to violence and car accidents. Tobacco, estimated to cause 40 per cent of all hospital illnesses, would also come before the class-A drug ecstasy.

However, there is no suggestion that alcohol and tobacco should be banned. The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce's commission on illegal drugs, communities and public policy has been examining what it believes is a 'serious misfit between the law relating to drugs and the way in which drugs are actually used by members of society'. ...

The Drugs league table

Drugs assessed in order of danger

1 Heroin
2 Cocaine
3 Barbiturates
4 Street methadone
5 Alcohol
6 Ketamine
7 Benzodiazepine
8 Amphetamines
9 Tobacco
10 Buprenorphine
11 Cannabis
12 Solvents
13 4-MTA
14 LSD
15 Methylphenidate
16 Anabolic steroids
17 GHB
18 Ecstasy
19 Alkyl nitrates
20 Khat

The Observer 04 March 2007