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NEW STRATEGY TO TACKLE
‘GAMBLING HARMS’
A NEW THREE-YEAR STRATEGY TO
REDUCE GAMBLING HARMS has
been launched by the Gambling
Commission, the government has
announced. The strategy will bring
together businesses, regulators,
charities and health bodies to ‘work
to bring a lasting impact’.
The strategy will focus on
prevention, education and support –
delivering ‘truly national’ treatment
that ‘meets the needs of users’ –
while the commission has also
pledged to take a ‘firm’ regulatory
enforcement approach.
Gambling advertising has long
been a controversial issue, with new
standards to protect children from
‘irresponsible’ adverts published by
the Committee of Advertising
Practice (CAP) earlier this year (DDN,
March, page 4). Finding help for
problem gambling, meanwhile, is still seen largely as a
postcode lottery – ‘if you use substances you’re far
better off in terms of access to treatment’, gambling
harm consultant Owen Baily told this year’s DDN
conference (DDN, March, page 16). ‘With gambling it
very much depends on where you live.’
‘The Gambling Commission’s strategy reflects our
clear expectation that the whole sector must come
together to reduce problem gambling and the harm it
does to people and their families,’ said sport and civil
society minister Mims Davies. ‘Through increased
‘The whole
sector must
come together
to reduce prob -
lem gambling
and the harm it
does to people
and their
families’
THERE ARE NO SPECIFIC UP-TO-DATE
GUIDELINES for forensic toxicology investiga -
tions for drug-related deaths except for single
substance groups such as fentanyl and its
analogues, according to an EMCDDA report. This
is the case at both the European and wider
international levels, says the agency, despite
between 7,000 and 9,000 drug-related fatalities
being reported in Europe every year for the past
decade. Screening for NPS in post-mortem
specimens, for example, requires up-to-date
technical equipment and is therefore ‘generally
limited to specialised laboratories’. An analysis of
post-mortem toxicology practices in drug-related
death cases in Europe at www.emcdda.europa.eu
MIMs davIes
research, education and treatment I want to see faster
progress made in tackling this issue.’
Public Health England will also conduct a review of
evidence on the public health aspects of gambling to
be published next spring, looking at the ‘range and
scale’ of gambling harms and the impact on health
and wellbeing. ‘PHE welcomes the strategy’s
commitment to taking a public health approach to
gambling related harms,’ said the agency’s director of
alcohol, drugs and tobacco, Rosanna O’Connor.
Strategy at www.reducinggamblingharms.org
COUNTY CONCERNS
THE HOME OFFICE has produced a series of
posters to help staff working in social
housing identify potential victims of county
lines activity and report their concerns. The
number of potential modern slavery victims
reported to the authorities has risen by
more than 80 per cent in the last two years
to just under 7,000, according to the
National Crime Agency (NCA) (DDN, April,
page 4). The numbers of British citizens and
minors referred doubled between 2018 and
2019, both partly the result of exploitation
of young people by county lines gangs.
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FORENSIC FINDINGS
‘Psychedelics are set to
have a major impact
on neuro science and
psychiatry...’
dR RoBIn caRhaRT-haRRIs
PSYCHEDELIC CENTRE
THE WORLD’S FIRST FORMAL CENTRE FOR
PSYCHEDELIC RESEARCH has been launched at
Imperial College London. The £3m centre will
focus on the use of psychedelics in mental
health care and as ‘tools to probe the brain’s
basis of consciousness’. The centre’s opening
represents a ‘watershed moment for
psychedelic science, symbolic of its now
mainstream recognition,’ said its head, Dr
Robin Carhart-Harris. ‘Psychedelics are set to
have a major impact on neuroscience and
psychiatry in the coming years.’
DEADLY SERIOUS
ALMOST 100 EXECUTIONS FOR DRUG-RELATED
OFFENCES are known to have been carried out
in 2018, according to Amnesty International.
While this represents 14 per cent of the total
number of global executions, it is down from
28 per cent in 2017. Overall, almost 700
executions in 20 countries were recorded by
the agency last year, a decrease of more than
30 per cent compared to 2017.
May 2019 | drinkanddrugsnews | 5