10 Interesting Things about Alcohol and Other Drugs (January 2015)

We scour the data on alcohol and other drugs and here are 10 things we found in the last month that might interest you, including:

• The number of high risk drug users, 
• Police estimates of the cost and purity of drugs, 
• Trends in property crime, and how drug services may have contributed to it's decline
• Numbers in treatment in Wales, 
• Benefit claimants with drug problems in Scotland (and alcohol problems across the UK), 
• Detection of drugs in prison, and 
• The support needs of single homeless people

As always any misinterpretation of the data you spot are down to me (and please do let me know so that I can fix them).

Take home naloxone

Stephen Malloy with naloxone

CC Image courtesy of  Nigel Brunsdon on Flickr

Andrew Brown, Director of Policy Influence and Engagement on the case for take home naloxone in England

Last year saw a worrying 32% increase in the number of heroin related deaths in England, which may have been reduced had naloxone been more widely available.

Naloxone is a medicine which is licensed for use in the treatment of suspected opiate overdose.  The medicine is already routinely carried and used by paramedics in the UK.  

In 2012 the Advisory Committee for the Misuse of Drugs called on the government to act to make naloxone more widely available, for instance, by providing drug users and family memebers with supplies of the medication, arguing that it is an evidence-based intervention, which can save lives and:

"fits with other measures to promote recovery by encouraging drug users to engage with treatment services, and ultimately, keep them alive until they are in recovery."

Earlier this year the Department of Health responded saying that regulations would be developed by the Medicines Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MRHA), and brought into force by October 2015.

In response to the rise in heroin and other opiod related deaths in England a number of organisations including DrugScope have come together to form the Naloxone Action Group for England.  At a summit hosted called by IDHDP and Blenheim CDP we looked at the learning from the national naloxone programmes in Wales and Scotland and at how a Birmingham GP (Judith Yates) has taken action to increase access to the medicine ahead of the MRHA regulations coming into force in October next year.  We heard from service users, drug treatment providers, NHS staff, academic and legal experts and others from across the sector and discussed actions we would want government, local commissioners, practitioners and manufacturers to take to reduce the number of overdose deaths.

Bite-sized Briefing - Shooting Up: infections among people who inject drugs in the UK

As part of the support we offer our members DrugScope's policy team send out a monthly round-up and précis of reports which we believe are of interest to the field.  The following is offered as an example of the content of our Bite-sized Breifing for November.

Public Health England (PHE) have updated their 2013 report setting out the current knowledge about levels of infections for people who inject drugs across the UK. As well as the report other resources include an infographic, a briefing for Directors of Public Health and a set of slides.

Key messages from the report include:

• Two in five injecting drug users are living with hepatitis C; half of these infections are undiagnosed.
• HIV levels remain low and the uptake of care is good. Around one in every 100 people who inject drugs is living with HIV.
• One in four people who inject psychoactive drugs report a recent symptom of an injecting site bacterial infection. Fewer (one in six) people who inject image enhancing drugs suffer these symptoms.
• The proportion of injecting drug users who share needles has halved in the last decade but still around one in seven continue to do so and almost one in three had injected with a used needle that they had attempted to clean.
• There has been a recent increase in the injection of amphetamines and amphetamine-type drugs, such as mephedrone, which is associated with higher levels of infection risks.

Perhaps the most important message in the report is that the provision of effective interventions, such as needle and syringe programmes, opioid substitution treatment and other drug treatment, which act to reduce risk and prevent infections, needs to be maintained.

Download here.

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