News

August 27, 2010: NO WAY TO DISPENSE PUBLIC MONEY
Comments: 3 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation
by Kathy Gyngell Chair - Prisons and Addictions Forum Centre for Policy Studies Read the complete blog here. Summary below. The NTA’s poor and unfair practices mean it cannot be trusted. This £19million+ a year public-health authority should be wound...

August 26, 2010: TIMETABLES FOR NEW GOVERNMENT POLICIES
Comments: 0 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation
HOME OFFICE The HO released its 2010 Drug strategy consultation paper towards the end of August and readers have until end-September to respond. This is perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get real help for addicts to recover. Feel free to...

August 24, 2010: DRUG DEATHS RISE AGAIN
Comments: 0 | Categories: News , Research
HEROIN IS BIGGEST KILLER - FOLLOWED BY METHADONE Drug-related deaths continue to increase, remaining higher than 2001 when the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse was founded to reduce them. Click here for related article on previous years' figures. UK...

August 23, 2010: FROM HOPELESSNESS TO ACTION: MOVING ADDICTS INTO RECOVERY
Comments: 0 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation , Therapeutic Techniques
RESPONSE TO HOME OFFICE DRUGS CONSULTATION We need ‘saltation’ – a successful leap to the major recovery league, a single mutation which dramatically alters the treatment phenotype, both a quantum jump and a series of rhythmical steps in time. Deirdre...

August 17, 2010: WE HAVE ALREADY DECRIMINALISED - THAT'S THE PROBLEM
Comments: 1 | Categories: News
by Kathy Gyngell Chair - Centre for Policy Studies' Prisons and Addictions forum It is hard to understand why Sir Ian Gilmore has chosen, right at the end of his worthy career, to ‘come out’ on behalf of the decriminalisation...

August 10, 2010: CAN THESE LEOPARDS CHANGE THEIR SPOTS?
Comments: 7 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation
RESPONSE TO THE NTA BUSINESS PLAN 2010/2011 by Deirdre Boyd, CEO of the Addiction Recovery Foundation Kathy Gyngell, chair of the Centre for Policy Studies' Addictions working group With the threat of abolition hanging over its head, the National Treatment...

August 8, 2010: A GLOSSARY FOR OUR TIMES
Comments: 4 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation
REWRITING THE DICTIONARY Tickboxers could eradicate war, disease, poverty and addiction in a mere few strokes of the pen, to meet targets – by rewriting the dictionary. Deirdre Boyd offers a glossary to recent claims. Preview from the September 2010...

August 6, 2010: MARIJUANA LEGALISATION'S UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
Comments: 0 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation
Next November, Californians will ballot on allowing people 21 years and older to possess, cultivate and transport cannabis for personal use, as well as enable its commercial production and sale. Professor Keith Humphreys of Stanford University School of Medicine's psychiatry...

July 30, 2010: BECOME AN INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTIONIST
Comments: 0 | Categories: News , Training
Training dates: 15,16,17 Ocober 2010 Location: central London Subsidised rate: £300 for the three days' training Trainers: Southworth Associates and Intervention 911 with the Addiction Recovery Foundation (charity no 328133), organiser of UKESAD and publisher of Addiction Today journal REHABS:...

July 27, 2010: OPEN LETTER TO PROFESSOR STEVEN FIELD
Comments: 4 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation
CHAIR OF COUNCIL - ROYAL COLLEGE OF GPs 14 Princes Gate Hyde Park London SW7 1PU Dear Professor Field, GP OVERPRESCRIBING OF ADDICTIVE DRUGS I am w riting to you regarding serious concerns I and many others have about the...

July 26, 2010: HEALTH SECRETARY: NTA TO BE ABOLISHED
Comments: 0 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation
Health secretary Andrew Lansley announced today that bureaucracy will be cut as health "arm's length bodies" are reduced from 18 to 8-10, saving over £180m by 2014/15 - and one of the bodies to be abolished is the National Treatment...

July 10, 2010: ABOLISH NTA TO CUT DRUG ADDICTION
Comments: 2 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation
"Methadone prescriptions for heroin addicts would be cut and the National Treatment Agency that runs the programme scrapped under plans from the Tories favourite think-tank," reports Rosemary Bennett, social affairs correspondent of The Times newspaper. "The Centre for Social Justice,...

July 9, 2010: DRUGS FIGURES PAINT INCORRECT PICTURE OF MISUSE
Comments: 1 | Categories: News , Research
MULTIPLE DRUG USE NOW THE NORM, HEROIN SHUNNED BY YOUNG Government drug policy is too centred on heroin abuse, fails to take account of the realities of current usage trends and needs to focus on individual user behaviour if it...

July 1, 2010: PCT FACES HIGH COURT CHALLENGE
Comments: 2 | Categories: News
AFTER AXING ALCOHOL REHAB FUNDING A campaign group dedicated to securing effective abstinence treatment for the UK’s 1.1m alcohol dependents today launched a High Court challenge against a Primary Health Care Trust after it axed all funding for places at...

June 30, 2010: NTA EVADES DEFINITIONS
Comments: 1 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation
IN FRAMEWORK FOR UK The National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse plans to roll out a “new framework document” for the country. Addiction Today will not reveal details in advance – but is already concerned about accountability and outcomes. The...

June 28, 2010: CORRECTING THE MEDIA
Comments: 0 | Categories: News
COMMENT FROM PROFESSOR NEIL McKEGANEY on Drug Dealing and Communities "As a result of an article that initially appeared in the Scotsman newspaper, a number of media outlets reported that I have proposed that drug dealers and drug dealing can...

June 11, 2010: THE HEROIN TRIAL FAILURE
Comments: 9 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation , Research
by Anders Ulstein Read the full article here. Summary below. Read related article: Dodgy dossier 2. The Lancet report (29 May 2010) of a recent heroin prescription trial has been widely promoted as a success. But only five out of...

June 11, 2010: "ADDICTIONS AND RECOVERY"
Comments: 0 | Categories: Families and children , News , Therapeutic Techniques
SELF HELP FOR ADDICTS, FAMILIES, FRIENDS The Addiction Recovery Foundation has updated and republished this book by its CEO Deirdre Boyd, and kept it at a low price of $9.99, to help as many people as possible to recover from...

June 1, 2010: UKESAD 2010: VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS
Comments: 0 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation , Training
"UKESAD 2010 was an inspiration," writes InExcess TV founder and presenter George Williams who filmed the three-day international symposium Building Bridges: from addiction to recovery. "Our highlights capture its spirit, with clips from key presentations and interviews, including White House...

May 2, 2010: GOVERNMENTS, POLICIES AND MANIFESTOS
Comments: 1 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation
“Government policies can improve drug problems – or worsen them,” White House drugs adviser Keith Humphreys notes. As Obama releases his first US drugs policy this summer, and three contenders for the next UK government publish their manifestos, it is...

May 1, 2010: WHO WILL TREAT THE YOUNG ADDICTS?
Comments: 0 | Categories: Current Affairs , Families and children , News
MEPHEDRONE TOLL MOUNTS In February, the UK’s only rehab for 11-18 year olds was finally forced to shut its doors. Within a month, mephedrone washed over these shores like a tsunami, producing a rising flood of addicted teens – with...

April 29, 2010: UKESAD 2010: best-practice therapies
Comments: 0 | Categories: News , Therapeutic Techniques , Training
The 60 worldclass presenters for over 40 presentations at the 7th UK/European Symposium on Addictive Disorders will exchange international expertise to help your clients recover from addiction/dependency. Topics include: Increase family access to treatment Working through the continuum of care...

April 15, 2010: INCREASE YOUR REVENUE...
Comments: 0 | Categories: News
BUILD YOUR BUSINESS WHILE HELPING PEOPLE TO RECOVER The elite interventionists participating in the 7th UK/European Symposium on Addictive Disorders could fill all rehab places in the UK for a year. They are reaching out to families across Europe, and...

April 6, 2010: WHITE HOUSE DRUGS ADVISER JOINS UKESAD
Comments: 0 | Categories: News
Keith Humphreys joins David Burrowes and James Brokenshire to speak on policy 13, 14, 15 May 2010 5* Grange City Hotel 8-14 Cooper's Row London EC3N 2BQ. To download the 16-page UKESAD programme, click here. UKESAD 2010: BUILDING BRIDGES -...

March 14, 2010: NOT SMART: GUARDIAN MISQUOTES
Comments: 3 | Categories: Current Affairs , News
Dr Joe Gerstein, founding president of Smart Recovery USA, was misquoted in the Guardian newspaper on 10 March as attacking AA - and the story was carried across the Atlantic to JoinTogether. He puts the record straight through Laura Graham...

March 3, 2010: ADDICTION TODAY EVIDENCE LEADS TO MORE REHAB TREATMENT/FUNDS
Comments: 4 | Categories: News , Policies, legislation
... and more cocaine-powder users to be treated The Home Affairs Committee 96-page Report on the Cocaine Trade has been released - and among its recommendations to government are two which have been influenced by evidence from the Addiction Recovery...

March 2, 2010: UNIVERSITY CERTIFICATE IN DRUG & ALCOHOL STUDIES - ONLINE
Comments: 3 | Categories: News , Training
Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year 2009/2010, the University of Stirling (charity no SC 011159) teaches Scottish Addiction Studies which has offered a University Certificate in Drug & Alcohol Studies since 1995. Since 1997, the course has been offered...

February 27, 2010: "TEEN REHAB SLAIN BY STATE ORTHODOXY AND TARGET TYRANNY"
Comments: 4 | Categories: Current Affairs , News
"I would be dead without Middlegate," a 17-year old former resident of Middlegate told Kathy Gyngell. "I had nowhere to go psychologically, no future. I needed to be shown that my life would be better without drugs. That is what...

February 25, 2010: END OF THE LINE FOR THE NTA?
Comments: 5 | Categories: Debate , National Treatment Agency - DoH , News , Policies, legislation
AND FOR THE ACMD? Iain Duncan Smith MP has given a speech in which he calls for the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse to be replaced. He also advocates for rehab places to be quadrupled - and filled with...

February 25, 2010: BREAKTHROUGH TO RECOVERY
Comments: 6 | Categories: Current Affairs , National Treatment Agency - DoH , News , Policies, legislation
As the country awaits a new government, can we hope for improvement in guiding desperate, vulnerable people towards true recovery from addiction? The Conservative Party adopted 70 policies, and Labour 39 policies, from the Centre for Social Justice, founded by...