Link to Transform UK's blog from now on

Happy New Year

2010 was a good year for us - we featured in a Channel 4 Documentary, gained the editorial support of the Herald and the Daily Record, wrote an opinion piece for the Scotsman, participated in successful live debates on Radio Scotland, got invited to speak to various groups of people etc etc.

We've decided that due to all our other commitments (paid jobs, families) that we can't do justice to this blog, and instead will link directly to Transform in Bristol's blog.

http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/

Jolene and Katrina

www.tdpfscotland.org.uk

minimum pricing DOES matter - from Joan McAlpine's excellent blog

At work yesterday I mentioned my annoyance with the Scottish Government and their refusal to act on minimum pricing, and the consensus was that they were doing the right thing, and that minimum pricing would only affect people like us who have the odd social drink, and wouldn't really help Scotland's chronic relationship with alcohol. They were asking me to 'show them the evidence' but all I could say was the relative to earnings alcohol has got cheaper and cheaper over the past 30 years, and our problems with it worse and worse. Then last night I joined the very clever Joan McAlpine's twitter feed, and this morning was tweeted this excellent article......

Finland, the WHO and alcohol: Solid evidence that price DOES matter

In 2004, Finland lifted the prohibition on people bringing cheap alcohol into the country. The results were disastrous and consumption rose by 10%, along with alcohol related illness.

Labour and the other unionist parties are totally disingenuous when they say minumum pricing is untried and untested. Price does matter, as Finland shows. Yes, it would be better if the money went to the state instead of the supermarket. But the UK government refuse to act. Why, then, do these parties oppose calls to give Scotland control over duty on alcohol and other taxes? Might it be because Scotch whisky alone provides £1.6bn a year to the UK exchequer?

Kaye Adams was taken aback when Labour's Doctor Richard Simpson, a guest on her show, lamely responded that his only solution to the problem was to bat it back to the UK government - without even trying a Scottish approach. Some people think he was given too much time by the BBC. Personally, I think he was given enough time to hang himself. Listen again toCall Kaye here. Dr Simpson thinks most of the pensioners in the country are addicted to cheap vodka....he must hope Scotland is too inebriated to notice his inconsistency and opportunisim.

Incidently, the SNP proposal did not come out of thin air. It was based on research by the World Health Organisation . The WHO studied policies aimed at reducing alcohol consumption around the world. It concluded that the most effective methods to reduce consumption were 1. Target at risk groups. 2. Control price. 3 Reduce access.

WHO said woolly approaches such as "improve education" were least effective.

The SNP followed WHO advice by addressing the three different points in these ways 1. Ban under 21s from off sales (eg target as risk groups). 2. Set a minimum unit price. 3. Introduce separate tills for alcohol at supermarkets.

1 and 3 were killed off quickly and 2 was stopped yesterday.

There was a time when the Scottish divisions of London parties included a few folk who sincerely believed they were defending their country inside the UK. They were misguided but genuine. A few devolutionists were motivated by a sense of public service. Now, the plates have shifted. Nobody who watched yesterday's debate could believe those old time, pro-Scotland unionists still exist. The whole debate was an exercise in cynicism.

See early articles in the Sunday Times and here

Posted at 01:13 AM in Articles on Joan McAlpine, Edinburgh, Food and Drink, Glasgow, Politics, Scotland,The Sunday Times | Permalink

Technorati Tags: alcohol bill, alcohol problems, alcohol reduction, alcohol related problems, finland,Labour, minimum pricing, price, Scotland, Scottish parliament, SNP, Sunday Times, unionist, WHO,wolrd health organisation

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We can help solve the budget deficit

Transform launches updated and redesigned 'comparative cost effectiveness of drug prohibition / regulation' report

Summary:

‘The benefits of… [legalisation/regulation] – such as taxation, quality control and a reduction in the pressures on the criminal justice system – are far outweighed by the costs and for this reason, it is one that this Government will not pursue either domestically or internationally.”

Home Office Briefing, 2008

• Despite the billions spent each year on proactive and reactive drug law enforcement, the punitive prohibitionist approach has consistently delivered the opposite of its stated goals. The Government’s own data clearly demonstrates drug supply and availability increasing; use of drugs that cause the most harm increasing; health harms increasing; massive levels of crime created at all scales leading to a crisis in the criminal justice system; and illicit drug profits enriching criminals, fuelling conflict and destabilising producer and transit countries from Mexico to Afghanistan. This is an expensive policy that, in the words of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has also created a raft of 'negative unintended consequences’.
  
  
• The UK Government specifically claims the benefits of any move away from prohibition towards legal regulation of drug markets would be outweighed by the costs. No such cost-benefit analysis, or even a proper Impact Assessment of existing enforcement policy and legislation has ever been carried out here or anywhere else in the world. Yet there are clear Government guidelines that an Impact Assessment should be triggered by amongst other things, a policy going out to public consultation or when ‘unintended consequences’ are identified, both of which have happened with drug policy in recent years.
  
  
• Alternative approaches - involving established regulatory models of controlling drug production, supply and use - have not been considered or costed. The limited cost effectiveness analysis of current policy that has been undertaken has frequently been suppressed. In terms of scrutinizing major public policy and spending initiatives, current drug policy is unique in this regard.
  
  
• The generalisations being used to defend continuation of an expensive and systematically failing policy of drugs prohibition, and close down a mature and rational exploration of alternative approaches, are demonstrably based on un-evidenced assumptions.
  
  
• This paper is an attempt to begin to redress these failings by comparing the costs and benefits of the current policy of drug prohibition, with those of a proposed model for the legal regulation of drugs in the UK. We also identify areas of further research, and steps to ensure future drugs policy is genuinely based on evidence of what works.
  
  
• This initial analysis demonstrates that a move to legally regulated drug supply would deliver substantial benefits to the Treasury and wider community, even in the highly unlikely event of a substantial increase in use.

Cash for Sterilisation

Below is the text from Release's press release

I would also add to this that a study carried out at Edinburgh University found that kids preferred their parents when they were on various drugs compared to alcohol, and that the effects of a parent on alcohol were as bad as heroin. It's just not a clear cut issue as to what makes a good or bad parent.

As a family, we saw that self esteem was crucial to Alan's recovery - what kind of message is it sending out if we pick a group of people and say they are unfit to ever have kids. As a parent of young children myself I know that I am often not a model parent - good parenting is hard, and it is crazy to say that it is only heroin addicts who struggle with this.

It all comes back to the same old point - it is the illegality of drugs which cause the harm: the endless quest to score them, the underworld you are forced to inhabit, the stigma then placed on you by the rest of society etc etc

“It is enshrined in law that the welfare of children is paramount. But the issues are much less straightforward when it is claimed that the welfare of unborn children should be put above all else.

“Unlike the United States, we have universal, free health and social care system available to parents and their children. It is a fundamental principle of the NHS constitution that all treatment should be both informed and consensual; we believe that offering cash incentives to often very poor and marginalised people in return for sterilisation runs directly counter to this. It is exploitative, ethically dubious and morally questionable.

“The premise that people with drug problems should be sterilised further entrenches the significant stigmatisation and demonisation experienced by this group, making it less likely that people will come forward for help and support when they need it most.

“And where should the line be drawn? Potential parents experience a range of problems or circumstances which may present risks for the welfare of their babies and children. Who would be targeted next - people who smoke, have mental health problems, or live in poverty? Ensuring access to good quality treatment and welfare and safeguarding systems is the most effective, rational and humane approach to this complex issue, not sterilisation for cash.”

totally legal high

So we were asked to go and speak to an alcohol and drug partnership last week, and we were expecting it to be the usual turn up, do our thing, and have people not able to speak out truthfully due to their 'prominent position' in whichever role it is they do. But how pleasantly surprised we were when our ideas were openly embraced and requests for what can be done to move the issue forward were forthcoming. joys of joy I was on a totally legal (and natural) high about it for days. Meeting Mike on Friday to discuss our plan of action - what a great way to spend my 33rd birthday....

Jolene

Another country seeing sense and having the courage to speak out

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Wednesday declared his support for Mexican President Felipe Calderon's call for a discussion on drug legalization.

I suppose these places have been forced to look at the evidence given the extreme state of turmoil in mexico and columbia, but if we carry on the way we are going in the UK ....

Read the article here

Coalition Government Proposals to scrap benefits for chronic addicts

Yesterday morning got off to a quick start with a phonecall from BBC Scotland at 8am as I was busy preparing the kid's packed lunches - would I be prepared to comment live on the story that benefits would be withdrawn from those refusing treatment.

This is something that was first considered by the labour government, but then dropped and has now once again been picked up by the powers that be. This is despite the fact that the independent Social Security Advisory Committee reported, after researching the whole idea, that the proposal 'contains a number of significant flaws and is unlikely to produce robust results'
So no surprise there that the governement is refusing to listen to independent expert advice.

So as well as the fact there is no evidence this would work, they also agreed with our concerns at TDPF Scotland that

1) it is broadbly bad policy - withdrawing benefits from already vulnerable people only further adds to stigma and marginalisation, as well as potenitally forcing them towards crime and prostitution which of course has a knock on effect to society as a whole

2) if they are withdrawing benefits as a cost cutting measure, how are they proposing to find the hundreds of milions of pounds that would be needed to meet the shortfall in current rehab provision?

This is yet another example of government tinkering round the edges rather than have the courage to publicly face the fact that the current system is completely ineffective. Once more, we are calling for evidence based, rather than morally founded drug policies.