{"id":3167,"date":"2009-07-26T15:02:52","date_gmt":"2009-07-26T15:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=3167"},"modified":"2016-09-20T20:56:15","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T20:56:15","slug":"the-updated-government-drug-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2009\/07\/the-updated-government-drug-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Updated Government Drug Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kenneth Eckersely<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Re-Launched in January 2003, the Home office Minister\u2019s \u201cUpdated Drug Strategy 2002\u201d leaves nothing to be desired \u2014 except for an effective policy of real prevention capable of reducing the escalating\u00a0 numbers of new users, plus the provision of effective treatment intended to to cure dependent users. In other words what missing is a Drug Strategy intended to break the vicious circle of more and more of our citizen\u2019s using more and more drugs of all classes.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nearly every measure,- which Home Office Minister Bob Ainsworth very ably presented this week is capable of achieving what the whole country needs and wants, Unfortunately his Department has, produced a magnificent vehicle which will never get us to where we need to go, because the driver that the Departments of Education and Health have permitted to grab the steering\u00a0 wheel is not dedicated to reaching the same goals as the government.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Vested interests in the psycho-pharmacological field have been dictating the direction of our drugs education and the nature of our drug treatment for decades. Therefore, whilst the increased spending and personnel resources now being, committed by New Labour are essential to success, they are a total waste because their strategy vehicle is being directed along the road of greater profit to the counselling and pharmacological fraternity instead of along the road towards less drug use and less drug users.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Whilst it was reassuring to hear the Minister announce that it would never be the policy of this government to legalise any currently illicit drug the value of that statement was immediately destroyed by his decision to prescribe heroin alongside Methadone for issue at taxpayer expense to the expanding group of dependent drug users.\u00a0\u00a0 As a result whilst not legalising these drugs, he is in fact legalising individual addicts to use them.\u00a0 And because those recipients of governments largesse will no longer be breaking the law, reported crime statistics will appear to fall but user statistics will continue to climb.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Making a drug legally available to an individual does not by one iota change\u00a0 its effect on that individual.\u00a0 He or she is still a hard core drug user. The authoritative BIG ISSUE research \u2018Drugs at the Sharp End\u2019 showed that 89% of such users are still basically unemployable\u00a0 and that their main legitimate income is from Unemployment Benefit and\/or Housing\u00a0 and Children\u2019s Allowances. Furthermore, far from reducing drug use and crime, that report revealed that 8O% of those on prescribed methadone continued to use street drugs on\u00a0 a weekly basis and that 44% of those on prescribed methadone used heroin on a daily basis.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

One assumes that the new strategic move to also prescribe heroin is intended to avoid methadone users continuing with the illegal use of Street heroin. But is the Home Office\u00a0 not aware of the illegal street\u00a0 trade in prescribed methadone?\u00a0 Do they really believe that prescribed heroin will not also find its way back to the\u00a0 street as prescription users seek to enhance their, low income levels by selling \u201cguaranteed pure government issue heroin\u201d just as occurs with taxpayer supplied methadone.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If one concentrates only on opiate supply issues, the only way government can\u00a0 squeeze out the drug barons\u00a0 is by making the official prescription\u00a0 supply more plentiful, less costly and less dangerous than the smuggled supply.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The barons will respond with purer and even cheaper supplies and the overall effect\u00a0 will be a flooding\u00a0 of the market place\u00a0 with more accessible, stronger\u00a0 and cheaper supplies stimulating even greater usage as the illegal and legal suppliers battle for their market shares.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This is why aiming at the supply alone can never in the long run be an effective policy. The target should of course be demand. Regrettably\u00a0 this is not reduced by prescription supply. It is cut only by curing existing users of their habit and by preventing new users from entering the marketplace.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Whilst the Updated Strategy will pump more resources into the sort of \u2018treatment\u2019 which merely manages\u00a0 escalating prescribed drug use – the extra resources which will go into our school system will go mainly into drugs education not drug prevention..\u00a0 This raises the question which lesson you would want your child to learn ?\u00a0 \u2018I know all about drugs now dad’, (education) or would you prefer \u2018I don\u2019t use any drugs dad\u2019 (prevention).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The 6 \u2013 11 age group uses less than one fifth of the drugs used by the 12 \u2013 17 age group,\u00a0 30% of whom use with increasing regularity, and it is these usage and age levels which make a mockery of the new strategy\u2019s\u00a0 \u2018drugs education\u2019 proposals which are replete with \u2018harm reduction\u2019, \u2018informed choice\u2019, and \u2018responsible use\u2019 messages.\u00a0\u00a0 Such messages are likely valid when addressing an established user or addict.\u00a0 i.e. when it is part of \u2018we don\u2019t want to run your life for you, but we would like you to have a long one\u2019.\u00a0 So we apply harm reduction by giving the heroin user a clean needle because we don\u2019t want him catching AIDS,\u00a0 and we teach him responsible use to make sure he doesn\u2019t overdose.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But it is quite something else\u00a0 to an 11-to -14 year old who is just beginning to learn about drugs; \u2018This is how you use drugs responsibly\u2019 or, \u2018You will come\u00a0 to less harm\u00a0 when you\u2019re taking drugs if you do\u2019….. or, \u2018So you can find what drug might suit you best, here are the various choices and their effects.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Less than 25% of our school children in the 5 to 18 year age range use drugs (mainly cannabis) on a regular basis \u2018THIS MEANS THAT 75% DO NOT USE DRUGS, and to guard against their joining the use group, the principal message for that whole range of ages should be a PREVENTION message based on zero tolerance. Every \u2018Say NO to Drugs\u2019 campaign run in Britain has demonstrably saved children totally from drug use or has postponed early city to our drug culture.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It is because \u2018Just say NO and similar campaigns have worked that such zero-tolerance campaigns have been attacked by pushers and the inevitable libertarian or psychologist who believes that if child wants to put his hand on a hot stove, he should be given the freedom to do so, in order that he may learn from his own experience.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Bob Ainsworth twice expressed real concern because prisoners re-entering society after completing their sentences continue to a disturbing degree to overdose on drugs within the first weeks of their release, However, he (failed utterly to recognise that even though many of these released offenders had been subjected to rehabilitation in prison, THEY\u00a0 WERE NOT CURED, proving that the psycho-pharmacological treatments they received inside just do not work, and that what Sweden (for example) does should be tried. He was warm in his praise of those who had put together the Updated Strategy, and it was clear that a lot of good administrative and promotional work had been done by dedicated people within the Home Office and elsewhere. However, when it came to the vital technology of drug prevention and cures the Drug Strategy showed no real understanding of just how far his department has been misled by the vested interests who today essentially control drugs \u2018education\u2019 and drug treatment through lobbying front organisations like DrugScope, and the sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists who run our health and education departments.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

These are the people who, by prescription, are pushing\u00a0 psycho-pharmacological drugs such as Ritalin into our classrooms. These are the same people who are\u00a0 pushing the benzodiazepines into nursing homes, care homes, private homes and prisons and\u00a0 now they are pushing heroin and methadone into our drug using youth instead of curing them of their addiction problems – as other countries do.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Addiction is a golden goose which already provides huge profits for prescription drug producers and with heroin now set to go on prescription, pharmaceutical fat cats are all set to get even fatter at taxpayer expense. The now proposed ‘legalisation by prescription’ will do two things, firstly, it will increase the supply of opiates into the society and, secondly, it will increasingly place the production and supply of currently illegal drugs into the self proclaimed \u201cethical\u201d\u00a0 of the pharmaceutical industry. (How long before we have the prescription supply of cannabis, cocaine, amphetamines and crack?)\u00a0 Thirdly, the brand of permissive drugs \u2018education\u2019 proposed, which fails to prevent and fails to \u2018Say NO\u2019, -will ensure that an increasing number of new drug users are created every day. Fourthly, many questioners at the re-launch of the Updated Strategy were clearly having trouble with understanding why the government were not taking more advantage of existing law governing teenage illegal use of both tobacco and alcohol to close off the two main legal\u00a0 gateways to cannabis use.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Surveys show that cigarette smoking is a principal gateway to youth usage of cannabis, and that (like drinking of alcohol) may be an even more significant gateway. Whilst both of these substances are on sale to adults, they are both just as illegal as cannabis when it comes to their purchase and use by most of our population under l8 years of age. In addition to the obvious physical and mental effects, failing to stop adolescent illegal use of tobacco and alcohol moves our junior and teenage youth onto the wrong side of the law – namely the same outlaw side, as the use of cannabis.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As a result the move to cannabis is seen by our youth as no more significant in law breaking terms than a pint and a fag.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Our children are under greater attack than any other sector of our society, but the \u201cUpdated Drug Strategy 2002\u201d does more to provide doubtful ‘support’ and \u2018treatment’ after they\u2019ve been hit, than it does to protect them with up front zero tolerance prevention, followed if necessary by cures based on comfortable abstinence for life.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It used to be known as \u2018closing the stable door after the horse had gone’. Fortunately, provided the government can get out from under the control of the pharmaceutical lobby, a realistic updating of our Just \u2018updated drug strategy 20O2\u2019 might just get the horse back<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kenneth Eckersely Re-Launched in January 2003, the Home office Minister\u2019s \u201cUpdated Drug Strategy 2002\u201d leaves nothing to be desired \u2014 except for an effective policy of real prevention capable of reducing the escalating\u00a0 numbers of new users, plus the provision of effective treatment intended to to cure dependent users. In other words what missing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-sector"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}