Letters and events
DDN welcomes your letters . Please email the editor,
[email protected], or post them to DDN, CJ Wellings Ltd,
Romney House, School Road, Ashford, Kent TN27 0LT.
Letters may be edited for space or clarity.
APPAllIng oVeRSIgHt
Thank you for publishing the article ‘System
Failure’ about the lack of support for people
who’ve experienced childhood sexual abuse
(DDN, May, page 10). While I’m glad that this
issue is finally getting some attention, the
fact that it seems never to have been
properly addressed in most services is an
astonishing oversight. I was also shocked to
learn that there’s not even a system in place
to collect this sort of data in the first place.
The article quotes Chip Somers saying, ‘We
all know the numbers are immense, yet this is
an issue which still gets sidelined.’ I can attest
to this, having raised the subject more than
once in my previous job only to essentially get
fobbed off. It seems a wasted opportunity of
immense proportions, particularly at a time
when funding is becoming ever more scarce.
If someone has an entrenched drug or
alcohol problem because they’re self-
medicating to numb the pain of an
underlying issue as serious as this, what on
earth is the point of not properly addressing
that issue or not referring them on to
qualified, professional help? They’ll finish
treatment, relapse sooner or later, and be
right back where they started. It’s essentially
the equivalent of giving a cancer patient
some heavy painkillers but no treatment for
the condition itself.
The need for ‘better joined up working’
has become a mantra in this field, as it has in
many others, and we all know it’s often just
something to say. But all services should
have an effective process in place for
referring the people who need it to specialist
support, as they should when it comes to the
– clearly not unconnected – area of mental
health. Otherwise we’re letting our clients
down appallingly, and basically just wasting
our time.
Name and address supplied
AWKWARD FActS
Your ‘Media Savvy’ section very often
features national newspaper columnists
opining that the ‘war on the drugs’ has been
lost and the only sensible solution is
legalisation and regulation. This is now
pretty much mainstream thought in
broadsheet newspapers across the political
spectrum, the most recent example being
Christine Jardine of the Independent (DDN,
May, page 13). Young people are ‘pushed
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
towards dealers, and dangerous
unregulated backstreet drugs’, she tells us.
Would the drugs be less dangerous if they
were bought on a main road then?
Vice also had a handy article a few days
ago called ‘How to legalise every drug’.
Here, Steve Rolles of Transform pops up to
tell us that for cocaine, for example, a
‘licensed user pharmacy’ model would be
the best option. People would have to pass
an assessment to buy a ‘rationed amount –
say a gram a week’, and the price would
also need to be kept high enough to ‘avoid
encouraging use’.
Am I missing something here? If you
have any kind of a cocaine problem then a
gram a week isn’t going to be anywhere
near enough, so you’ll be straight back
round to your dealer. Ditto if he can offer a
better price, which he will – obviously. So
how is this going to take the market out of
the hands of dealers and criminals?
And wait, I thought part of the argument
about legalising and regulating drugs –
especially heroin – was that people wouldn’t
then be driven to acquisitive crime to fund
their habit because the prices were too high?
So the price needs to be high enough to
discourage use, but not so high that they
encourage crime? How much, then? To add
to the confusion, it’s often the same people
calling for legalisation who also want to see
minimum pricing introduced for alcohol to
discourage harmful use, because the prices
for that are too low. One can only wonder
how they manage to square that particular
circle in their heads.
The elephant in the room is of course the
US, where the overdose rate quadrupled in
the first 15 years of this century as,
coincidentally, did opioid prescribing levels.
That’s half a million people dead, a lot of it
from legal, regulated drugs. And then
there’s mephedrone. Before it was banned it
had very high rates of use among students
and other young people who’d never taken
drugs before but thought this was OK
because it was a ‘legal high’. When it was
made illegal, rates of use fell off a cliff. But
those sort of facts are a bit awkward, aren’t
they? So let’s just ignore them.
Molly Cochrane, by email
/DDNMagazine
@DDNMagazine
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
A cAll to engAge
Action on Addiction’s chief
executive Graham Beech
introduces a new
Addiction Awareness Week
on 10-16 June
WHERE DID THE IDEA COME FROM?
Everyone knows the problems associated with addiction are growing
and becoming increasingly complex. At the same time, society’s
capacity to deal with these issues is diminishing. People are finding
it increasingly difficult to access the treatment they need and are
facing sizeable barriers linked to stigma.
We’re hoping Addiction Awareness Week will play a key role in
raising awareness of the far-reaching negative effects of addiction
and providing a platform for focused conversations about the wide-
ranging benefits of community-led recovery. We’re also looking to
share inspirational stories so that people feel inspired to seek the
help they need, and more is done to help them achieve a rewarding
and stable life in recovery.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN?
The week is a great opportunity to put the spotlight on addiction
and for people to connect and to challenge stigma and
discrimination. The conversations which will take place, in
Westminster and Whitehall, in cafés and bars, and around people’s
kitchen tables, will help bring addiction out of the shadows and in
front of the public eye.
In addition to organising our own events throughout the week,
we’ll be working with charities and other organisations who have
timetabled their own initiatives and social media activity. The idea is
that by working together during a week focused on addiction, we’ll
be able to cut through the news agenda and engage many different
audiences.
HOW WILL IT SUPPORT OTHER INITIATIVES?
There are already a number of fantastic campaigns and initiatives
that challenge stigma and increase knowledge about addiction, in
many of which Action on Addiction participates. An awareness week
that focuses on the subject and becomes an annual event should add
significant weight to these activities. Substantial headway has been
made in recent years on raising awareness of issues associated with
mental health, and we’re hoping for a similar shift in relation to
addiction. Changing hearts and minds can never be achieved through
one campaign in isolation, it always requires a groundswell of
activity from multiple organisations who are able to engage clients
and service users, ambassadors, donors, and high-profile supporters.
HOW DO PEOPLE GET INVOLVED?
We’ve received an overwhelmingly positive response throughout the
sector. The week is also being supported by those operating in related
services and arts organisations, from MPs, policy professionals and in
the media. We’d love people to share their stories throughout the
week on social media and via their own communications channels.
Our email address is: [email protected]
For more information visit www.addictionawarenessweek.org.uk
June 2019 | drinkanddrugsnews | 17