OFFICIAL FIGURES VINDICATE ADDICTION TODAY

ADDICTION TODAY MARCH 2009 ARTICLE DEMONSTRABLY TRUE, AS OFFICE FOR NATIONAL STATISTICS & ST GEORGE’S UNIVERSITY SHOW DRUG DEATHS AT 8-YEAR HIGH

A few months ago, senior management at the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse wrote scathing letters reprimanding Addiction Today and its editor Deirdre Boyd.

Our crime? 

The NTA had told the Substance Misuse Management in General Practice, among others, that drug deaths were falling; this was used to continue inappropriate practice rather than improve it.  Addiction Today printed an article in March 2009 revealing that drug deaths were, on the contrary, rising – the NTA said our words were “wholly untrue”.

This week, Addiction Today was authoritatively validated, with the publication of the latest drug death figures by the Office for National Statistics and St George’s University/International Centre for Drug Policy. Drug deaths are the highest in eight years.

In other words, substance-misuse deaths are higher now than when the NTA was set up with a target of reducing drug deaths – as well as the target of enabling access to “better, fairer, more treatment” (but more of that elsewhere on this website). And the second-greatest cause of such deaths is methadone; Addiction Today has long bemoaned bad-practice prescribing of this alternative drug.

At the end of the day, our work is about reclaiming lives. How can we address drug deaths, and the bad practice leading to them, if we do not accept the numbers?  

Update yourself on the latest drug death figures here.

Read The NTA, Paul Hayes and drug deaths correspondence here.

Read GPs, the NTA and the numbers game here.

Comments

[Professor Neil McKeganey, Kathy Gyngell]

Dear Addiction Today,

We refer also to the Telegraph report (Cocaine overdose deaths up 20 per cent, 26th August 2009; www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ uknews/6093517/Cocaine-overdose-deaths-up-20-per-cent.html) of the continued and ever more dramatic rise in last-year drug deaths; this failed to mention those that appear to be a direct outcome of the government's highly interventionist drug 'treatment' policy - a 16% rise in deaths involving methadone; 74% up since 2004. This parallels a period in which methadone prescribing in general practice doubled (2003 - 2008) and in which spending on methadone went up threefold.

Within Scotland (Edinburgh for example) there are now more deaths associated with methadone than there are associated with heroin. If these deaths were occurring in any other population group there would be an immediate call for a detailed investigation - in this case of our national methadone programme - and a suspension of that programme till the results of the enquiry were forthcoming.

Yours sincerely,

Neil McKeganey
Professor of Drug Misuse Research
Centre For Drug Misuse Research, University of Glasgow,
89 Dumbarton Road, Glasgow, G11 6PW
(0)141 330 3616

Kathy Gyngell
Research Fellow
Centre for Policy Studies
57 Tufton Street
London SW1P 3QL

[Frugal Dougal]

In addition to less prescriptions of methadone to chaotic users, we need more supervision and random testing, and harsher penalties for people who use threats to get hold of other people's methadone.

[Peter O'Loughlin]

Following the article I wrote for Addiction Today, revealing the anomaly between the NTA claims and the statistical evidence provided by the Office of National Statistics, a cursory glance through the ensuing and quite heated correspondence, shows that I came in for quite a lot of stick from those eager to suppress the truth.

It eventually emerged that the figures the NTA were basing their misleading claim on were confined to England only, whereas the figures I quoted were for England and Wales. Notwithstanding excluding the Welsh deaths, the NTA's claim still did not stand up; in truth, even by claiming to show that deaths had dropped by confining the figures to England, there was, as I pointed out in my final posting on the debate, only 1 year in which a drop had occurred. The NTA's response was conspicuous by its absence; no apology for the aggressive and rude manner in which they had attempted to discredit my article, or attack Addiction Today, nor did they have the grace to withdraw their specious claim. The outcome as we have seen is a further escalation in drug related deaths and in particular those related to heroin cocaine and methadone.

The deaths for England and Wales for all three of those drugs have increased yet again, this time however there has been a welcome drop in the deaths in Wales, but a marked increase in England. One can only hope that the NTA, in their desperation to be seen as if they are fulfilling their duty of reducing drug related deaths, do not make a similar unwarranted claim by confining the figures to Wales.

[Anders Ulstein]

The situation in UK is an example to watch abroad. Liberal UK drug strategies are in many ways being promoted internationally, such as within the EU and UN framework. Evidence of its failures must be made available beyond UK borders. The two questions a foreigner would ask is: 1) What changes if any were made to the substitution programmes (expansions, lowering tresholds, supervision etc) between 2001-2008 when drug deaths rose; 2)Is there something about HOW methadone is prescribed that is particular to the UK?
The tendencies, I think, are similar in other countries, but the scale of the side effects seems to be particularly sever in the UK. Is this because of the large numbers in substitution, or how its done? In any case, many countries has been or are in the process of expanding substitution programmes and it's therefore possible that the UK statistics today is ours tomorrow...

Anders Ulstein
Int. director
Actis, Norwgian Policy Network on Alcohol and Drugs

[National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA)]

Any increase in the number of people dying as a result of illicit drug misuse is worrying.

The ONS figures cover deaths by accidental poisoning; intentional self harm; and illicit drug dependency.

It is difficult to ascertain the reasons why 138 more drug users have died in England since 2007. There is no reason to believe there are more injecting drug users – according to Home Office prevalence data for 2004-06 the number of injecting drug users in England fell by 11 per cent – but we suspect those individuals with a long history of drug dependency and injecting drug use are engaging in more dangerous behaviour and are therefore at greater risk of dying from overdose.

The increase in cocaine-implicated deaths is a particular concern. It is reflected by the British Crime Survey’s recent and equally worrying findings around increase in prevalence and by the steady increase in the total number of individuals entering and receiving treatment for their cocaine and crack use.

Entering drug treatment is protective: it stabilises individuals by reducing the harmful drug practices which pose the greatest risk of death; improves physical health and wellbeing and ultimately helps individuals to overcome their dependence and live drug-free lives.

The NTA in conjunction with the Department of Health is committed to delivering an action plan to reduce drug-related harm and overdose death in England and have boosted the national harm reduction campaign by targeting those most at risk of overdose with additional support, including a programme of the life-saving drug naloxone which reverses the effects of heroin overdose. These measures have been well received by drug users, their families and the treatment sector.