Funding crisis
6 | drinkanddrugsnews | May 2017
The delayed drug
strategy – and lack of
plan for an alcohol
strategy – is pulling the
lifeline from a sector in
crisis, hears DDN
T
he new drug strategy is in limbo. Delayed for
months without explanation, the questions
are mounting against a backdrop of the
highest number of drug-related deaths ever
recorded. In the new year, the government
said ‘soon’. In February they confirmed ‘shortly’.
On 30 March, Liz McInnes MP asked for a date for the
strategy, telling the house: ‘Local authorities have seen their
funding for drug and alcohol treatment slashed by 42 per
cent since 2010… there are more than 1m alcohol-related
hospital admissions each year, and alcohol is a contributory
factor in more than 200 different health conditions. Let us
hope that both a drugs strategy and an alcohol strategy will
be forthcoming as a matter of urgency.’
At the end of April, Sarah Wollaston MP asked the
parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Home
Office, Sarah Newton, when it would be published. She
answered: ‘We are currently developing the new drug
strategy, working across government and with key
partners. The new strategy will be published in due
course.’ With the general election taking place on 8 June,
no one is expecting progress anytime soon.
Furthermore, there is no hint of an alcohol strategy,
apart from in Scotland, despite problematic alcohol use
affecting many more people than drugs.
At the latest cross-party parliamentary group on
drugs, alcohol and justice, Colin Drummond, professor of
addiction psychiatry at King’s College London, was invited
to speak about alcohol misuse and treatment.
He began by outlining the worsening picture on alcohol,
stating that ‘alcohol-related health conditions, including
liver disease, have increased and alcohol-related hospital
admissions have doubled.’ But his talk went on to explore
the deepening crisis for the drug and alcohol sector.
‘We’ve had a world-class addiction system in the UK,
and we’re in danger of losing it. We’re in danger of it not
existing in a few years’ time,’ he said. Looking at the recent
rise in drug-related deaths (DRDs) he referred to the
government’s reaction to a previous epidemic around 2001:
‘In the 2000s we had a huge investment in treatments, so
drug deaths began falling. But they’re now at their highest
since records began.’
So what’s going wrong? Why are we failing? ‘Declining
resources for this population’ were an obvious factor,
combined with the disastrous effect of constant
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