Will Public Health England and a new ministerial team help to refocus drug and alcohol policy, or are they empty exercises in rebranding? DDN reports.

Amid the gasps that greeted the news that David Cameron had used his cabinet reshuffle to appoint Jeremy Hunt as health secretary – ‘Wow,’ said the Independent’s Matthew Norman, ‘that’s somethin’ else’ – few noticed that Anna Soubry had replaced Anne Milton as parliamentary under secretary of state. At least that was the case until her comments about assisted suicide led to her being branded a ‘train wreck’ and the knives coming out in the press. 

The Daily Mail’s Melanie Phillips, however, chose a different line of attack. She branded Soubry a ‘drugs policy liberaliser’, based on comments made to a group of sixth formers six years ago – before Soubry was even an MP – that in an open debate the students would likely conclude that ‘certain types of cannabis are less harmful than alcohol and tobacco’ – an ‘idiotic and dangerous view’, said the Mail. 

When the column was published it was unde­cided which minister would be given the drugs brief, although Phillips stated that, if those were still Soubry’s views, giving her any health brief would signal ‘a truly dire absence of due diligence’. In fact – after a few days when it looked as thought the brief would go to Dan Poulter – it was confirmed that Soubry’s portfolio does include drugs and alcohol.

Some in the sector had been hopeful about Poulter’s potential appointment, as he had done work on behalf of disadvantaged populations in his capacity as a GP. Whether Soubry does turn out to be a ‘liberaliser’ remains to be seen but as her brief also includes ‘relationship with Public Health England, [the] public health system and finance’, could we be looking at a new era characterised by a genuine public health approach to substance issues, or is the switch to Public Health England nothing more than a change of name?

‘I am optimistic,’ says Gerry Stimson, former Harm Reduction International (HRI) executive director and now programme director for City health 2012, a conference organised by the London Drug and Alcohol Policy Forum (LDAPF) to be held later this month. ‘To have a body called Public Health England sends a strong message that drugs, alcohol and related issues need to be dealt with in a cross-cutting way. It’s all still shaping up, but certainly the intent is there – that you need to join up the health, welfare and social responses – and that’s good.’

The conference will provide an opportunity to question Public Health England chief executive Duncan Selbie, while its overall aim is a broadening of approach, says Stimson. ‘The way things are beginning to shape up with Public Health England, it’s interesting to look at health issues in a cross-cutting way. The conference aims to explore a lot of the good things in the public health arena that are done at a city level, often despite what’s going on at a national level.’

One example is around housing, he says. ‘There is growing evidence that if you can sort out people’s housing needs then the drug and alcohol aspects sort of fall into place, so initiatives like Housing First are interesting. Obviously it’s a long way off yet, and it’s a bit optimistic because there’s such a shortage of housing in this country, but it’s a step in the right direction. Alcohol is also an interesting example – you can argue for taxes to go up, or for laws to change, but what do you do now on a day-to-day basis at a city level to reduce nuisance and harm?’ 

Alcohol treatment has historically been seen as the poor relation to drugs, and while NTA chief executive Paul Hayes told delegates at DDN’s Seize the day conference that the move to Public Health England offered the chance to ‘right this historic wrong’ (DDN, 7 March 2011, page 10), others worry that the shift – when combined with spending cuts and changes in commissioning – just adds to overall uncertainty about the future of service delivery. There are also concerns, as Hayes himself conceded, that not all directors of public health will see drug and alcohol treatment as a priority for their area.

Despite treatment funds no longer being ring-fenced, expectations for service delivery will remain, which will ‘add some uncertainty’, says Stimson. ‘It’s like saying “you can do what you like with the money but you still have to deliver X”. We need to keep the right balance between public health and treatment needs. We need to ensure that public health protection continues – needle exchange, HIV testing, hepatitis C testing, overdose prevention – we need the mixed package. That’s the message that’s got to come through, and there will be a steep learning curve at local authority level. It’s keeping the balance of public health protection and individual treatment needs.’ 

Ultimately, however, the fact that Public Health England will be around at time when the rest of the health service is undergoing such a dramatic overhaul can only be a good thing, he believes. ‘I hope it keeps a public health vision alive and prominent. In a way it’s going back to a much earlier version of public health, when it was the municipal authorities who had the responsibility rather than the health authorities.’ 

As co-founder of the Public Health Alliance Geof Rayner told DDN’s Together we stand conference earlier this year (DDN, March, page 9), ‘It’s back in local government now. How well this works will be down to you making your case.’

City Health takes place in London on 22-23 October. www.cityhealth.org.uk

The DDN letters page, where you can have your say.

The August issue of DDN will be out on 2 September — make sure you send letters and comments to claire@cjwellings.com by Wednesday 28 August to be included.

 False dichotomy

In her open letter to Anna Soubry MP Dr Chris Ford draws an erroneous and largely unhelpful distinction between treating drug misuse as a health issue and treating it as a criminal justice issue.

In peer-reviewed research evaluating the impact of major drug enforcement operations on street-level drug markets it was found that the proportion of drug users contacting a methadone prescribing clinic increased massively from 30.2 per cent in the weeks in advance of the operations to 84.3 per cent in the weeks following the police operations (McGallagly and McKeganey 2012).

This research shows that drug enforcement operations can have a welcome positive impact on encouraging drug users into drug treatment. Instead of claiming that drug use is either a health or a criminal justice issue we need effective joint working between health and criminal justice agencies and a recognition that both domains have an equally important contribution to make in tackling drug misuse.

Ref: McGallagly, J., McKeganey, N. (2013) Does robust drug enforcement lead to an increase in drug users? Drugs: Education, Prevention, and Policy, 2013, Vol. 20, No. 1: Pages 1-4.

Neil McKeganey Ph.D, director, Centre for Drug Misuse Research, Glasgow

Self-help salvation

It is ridiculous for Ford and Soubry to be battling it out over whether addiction is a criminal or a health issue. It is the failure of the law and of medicine to understand and cure addiction that gives neither of them the right to even have an opinion.

Addiction is simply a current condition initiated by an individual making the mistake of choosing to use an addictive substance in an attempt to solve a ‘personal’ problem. It is straightforwardly a personal decision, made alone or in agreement with advice, which proves to be a mistake, and for which medical ‘treatment’ has never been an answer. Nor, as history shows, can criminal punishment resolve the country’s addiction problems.

When the coalition chose as the first strand of their 2010 drug strategy ‘reducing demand’, they knew what they were doing, because they were focusing on the source of our addiction problems – the individual addict. As they move towards ‘localism’ they are again focusing on the individual addicts that all inevitably exist in their local community.

It follows that reducing demand is achieved solely and only by curing individual addicts, and this is just not occurring other than sporadically as a result of medical treatment or criminal labelling or trying to restrict supply.

But it can be achieved by recognising that life is a do-it-for-yourself activity, that deciding to use drugs is also a do-it-for-yourself activity and that quitting addiction is most often achieved on a self-help basis.

Seventy to 75 per cent of addicts who have used for three days, three weeks, three months, three years or 30 years have tried, often daily, to quit and have failed – but still want to quit.

All they lack is the knowledge of how to attain lasting relaxed abstinence, and we know from the results of addiction recovery training delivered since 1966, and now at 169 centres (including prison units) in 49 countries, that 70-plus per cent can cure themselves.

So lets give addicts and the drug strategy a chance – by training drunks and addicts to cure themselves.

Kenneth Eckersley, CEO, Addiction Recovery Training Services (ARTS)

 35 years strong

Norwich charity NORCAS are celebrating 35 years of working in the region with a huge birthday party – all welcome!

Since 1978 when NORCAS opened its first alcohol service in Norwich they have gone on to provide drug, gambling and welfare rights services for many thousands of people across East Anglia. Now working in partnership with national substance misuse charity Phoenix Futures under the name Phoenix + NORCAS, the party will be an opportunity to hear inspirational stories of recovery, meet staff, volunteers and service users, past and present and to learn more about the plans for the future.

The party to be held on 22 August at OPEN, 20 Bank Plain, Norwich NR2 4SF, between 10.30am and 3.00pm, is open to all who want to drop in. Lunch and (of course birthday cake!) will be provided.

As Paul Hammond, Phoenix and NORCAS service manager says, ‘Over the last year alone NORCAS has worked with 8,342 adult and youth clients across Norfolk and Suffolk, and positively impacted the lives of many more through educational events. We want to thank the local community for the support they’ve provided us to help so many local people make positive changes in their lives.’

For more information go to www.phoenix-futures.org.uk/phoenix-norcas or contact me on bob.campbell@phoenix-futures.org.uk

Bob Campbell, special projects officer, Phoenix Futures

Help the aged

I have been trying to raise the profile of alcohol misuse in older people for some years, particularly as my own clinical service covers a population that has a rate of alcohol-related deaths in the 75-plus age group that is more than twice the national average.

Older people with alcohol problems remain caught between services. Luckily for me, I managed to gain additional skills in substance misuse and integrate these into a mainstream mental health of older adults service.

I would be interested to know whether practitioners see this as a growing clinical and public health problem and what is being done to tackle this problem in their local area or region.

Dr Tony Rao, consultant old age psychiatrist and chair of Royal College of Psychiatrists Substance Misuse Working Group

How lucky we are

Reading the coverage of the International Harm Reduction Conference really brought it home how lucky we are in the UK.

Sadly I was unable to attend in person but by reading the DDN Daily updates and the special issue I was able to get a real sense of the genuinely life-threatening situations that users in many countries face. It once again reinforced the indisputable fact that harm reduction saves lives.

To have the luxury of debating the individual nature of recovery and patient choice is something that many of the speakers at the conference must dream about, and we would do well to remember that. While the stories of the ongoing battle to have their drug use recognised as a health issue, and the ongoing human rights abuses were as harrowing as ever, there did seem some cause for cautious optimism.

The, albeit slowly, changing political acceptance that harm reduction works, the increasing high-profile support and, most importantly, the untiring work of the activists working across the world do give you hope that things will get better. I would like to thank both Harm Reduction International for having the courage to hold this unique event, and DDN for providing coverage to everyone unable to attend.

J Spence, by email

The government is to create new powers to seize chemicals suspected of being used as cutting agents for illegal drugs, as part of its Serious and organised crime strategy. The move will ‘drive up the cost and risk for organised criminals’, it says.

Other measures set out in the strategy include doubling the size of HMRC’s criminal taxes unit – which uses tax interventions to ‘attack the finances’ of people involved in drugs trafficking and other offences – and moves to increase pubic recognition of offences, with the document citing a recent Home Office-funded ‘crimestoppers’ awareness-raising campaign on cannabis cultivation that led to a 25 per cent increase in public reporting. There will also be more use of intervention programmes around gangs and troubled families. 

The document states that, although drug use is falling in the UK, the country’s illegal drugs market is still worth around £3.7bn a year and is ‘controlled by organised crime’. The strategy ‘focuses on preventing people from getting involved in organised crime, improving Britain’s protection against serious and organised criminality and ensuring communities, victims and witnesses are supported when serious and organised crimes occur’, the government says. 

Meanwhile, Norman Baker has replaced Jeremy Browne as crime prevention minister in a government reshuffle. His responsibilities will include the drugs strategy, alcohol – including the Licensing Act and police and local authority powers – public health, domestic violence and homelessness. The appointment is a controversial one, in part because Baker is the author of a book arguing that the verdict of suicide in the death of former weapons inspector Dr David Kelly was ‘not credible’. Elsewhere, Jane Ellison has taken over as public health minister from Anna Soubry.

Serious and organised crime strategy at www.gov.uk 

The DDN letters page, where you can have your say.

The August issue of DDN will be out on 2 September — make sure you send letters and comments to claire@cjwellings.com by Wednesday 28 August to be included.

 False dichotomy

In her open letter to Anna Soubry MP Dr Chris Ford draws an erroneous and largely unhelpful distinction between treating drug misuse as a health issue and treating it as a criminal justice issue.

In peer-reviewed research evaluating the impact of major drug enforcement operations on street-level drug markets it was found that the proportion of drug users contacting a methadone prescribing clinic increased massively from 30.2 per cent in the weeks in advance of the operations to 84.3 per cent in the weeks following the police operations (McGallagly and McKeganey 2012).

This research shows that drug enforcement operations can have a welcome positive impact on encouraging drug users into drug treatment. Instead of claiming that drug use is either a health or a criminal justice issue we need effective joint working between health and criminal justice agencies and a recognition that both domains have an equally important contribution to make in tackling drug misuse.

Ref: McGallagly, J., McKeganey, N. (2013) Does robust drug enforcement lead to an increase in drug users? Drugs: Education, Prevention, and Policy, 2013, Vol. 20, No. 1: Pages 1-4.

Neil McKeganey Ph.D, director, Centre for Drug Misuse Research, Glasgow

Self-help salvation

It is ridiculous for Ford and Soubry to be battling it out over whether addiction is a criminal or a health issue. It is the failure of the law and of medicine to understand and cure addiction that gives neither of them the right to even have an opinion.

Addiction is simply a current condition initiated by an individual making the mistake of choosing to use an addictive substance in an attempt to solve a ‘personal’ problem. It is straightforwardly a personal decision, made alone or in agreement with advice, which proves to be a mistake, and for which medical ‘treatment’ has never been an answer. Nor, as history shows, can criminal punishment resolve the country’s addiction problems.

When the coalition chose as the first strand of their 2010 drug strategy ‘reducing demand’, they knew what they were doing, because they were focusing on the source of our addiction problems – the individual addict. As they move towards ‘localism’ they are again focusing on the individual addicts that all inevitably exist in their local community.

It follows that reducing demand is achieved solely and only by curing individual addicts, and this is just not occurring other than sporadically as a result of medical treatment or criminal labelling or trying to restrict supply.

But it can be achieved by recognising that life is a do-it-for-yourself activity, that deciding to use drugs is also a do-it-for-yourself activity and that quitting addiction is most often achieved on a self-help basis.

Seventy to 75 per cent of addicts who have used for three days, three weeks, three months, three years or 30 years have tried, often daily, to quit and have failed – but still want to quit.

All they lack is the knowledge of how to attain lasting relaxed abstinence, and we know from the results of addiction recovery training delivered since 1966, and now at 169 centres (including prison units) in 49 countries, that 70-plus per cent can cure themselves.

So lets give addicts and the drug strategy a chance – by training drunks and addicts to cure themselves.

Kenneth Eckersley, CEO, Addiction Recovery Training Services (ARTS)

 35 years strong

Norwich charity NORCAS are celebrating 35 years of working in the region with a huge birthday party – all welcome!

Since 1978 when NORCAS opened its first alcohol service in Norwich they have gone on to provide drug, gambling and welfare rights services for many thousands of people across East Anglia. Now working in partnership with national substance misuse charity Phoenix Futures under the name Phoenix + NORCAS, the party will be an opportunity to hear inspirational stories of recovery, meet staff, volunteers and service users, past and present and to learn more about the plans for the future.

The party to be held on 22 August at OPEN, 20 Bank Plain, Norwich NR2 4SF, between 10.30am and 3.00pm, is open to all who want to drop in. Lunch and (of course birthday cake!) will be provided.

As Paul Hammond, Phoenix and NORCAS service manager says, ‘Over the last year alone NORCAS has worked with 8,342 adult and youth clients across Norfolk and Suffolk, and positively impacted the lives of many more through educational events. We want to thank the local community for the support they’ve provided us to help so many local people make positive changes in their lives.’

For more information go to www.phoenix-futures.org.uk/phoenix-norcas or contact me on bob.campbell@phoenix-futures.org.uk

Bob Campbell, special projects officer, Phoenix Futures

Help the aged

I have been trying to raise the profile of alcohol misuse in older people for some years, particularly as my own clinical service covers a population that has a rate of alcohol-related deaths in the 75-plus age group that is more than twice the national average.

Older people with alcohol problems remain caught between services. Luckily for me, I managed to gain additional skills in substance misuse and integrate these into a mainstream mental health of older adults service.

I would be interested to know whether practitioners see this as a growing clinical and public health problem and what is being done to tackle this problem in their local area or region.

Dr Tony Rao, consultant old age psychiatrist and chair of Royal College of Psychiatrists Substance Misuse Working Group

How lucky we are

Reading the coverage of the International Harm Reduction Conference really brought it home how lucky we are in the UK.

Sadly I was unable to attend in person but by reading the DDN Daily updates and the special issue I was able to get a real sense of the genuinely life-threatening situations that users in many countries face. It once again reinforced the indisputable fact that harm reduction saves lives.

To have the luxury of debating the individual nature of recovery and patient choice is something that many of the speakers at the conference must dream about, and we would do well to remember that. While the stories of the ongoing battle to have their drug use recognised as a health issue, and the ongoing human rights abuses were as harrowing as ever, there did seem some cause for cautious optimism.

The, albeit slowly, changing political acceptance that harm reduction works, the increasing high-profile support and, most importantly, the untiring work of the activists working across the world do give you hope that things will get better. I would like to thank both Harm Reduction International for having the courage to hold this unique event, and DDN for providing coverage to everyone unable to attend.

J Spence, by email

The post Letters appeared first on Drink and Drugs News.

The government is to create new powers to seize chemicals suspected of being used as cutting agents for illegal drugs, as part of its Serious and organised crime strategy. The move will ‘drive up the cost and risk for organised criminals’, it says.

Other measures set out in the strategy include doubling the size of HMRC’s criminal taxes unit – which uses tax interventions to ‘attack the finances’ of people involved in drugs trafficking and other offences – and moves to increase pubic recognition of offences, with the document citing a recent Home Office-funded ‘crimestoppers’ awareness-raising campaign on cannabis cultivation that led to a 25 per cent increase in public reporting. There will also be more use of intervention programmes around gangs and troubled families. 

The document states that, although drug use is falling in the UK, the country’s illegal drugs market is still worth around £3.7bn a year and is ‘controlled by organised crime’. The strategy ‘focuses on preventing people from getting involved in organised crime, improving Britain’s protection against serious and organised criminality and ensuring communities, victims and witnesses are supported when serious and organised crimes occur’, the government says. 

Meanwhile, Norman Baker has replaced Jeremy Browne as crime prevention minister in a government reshuffle. His responsibilities will include the drugs strategy, alcohol – including the Licensing Act and police and local authority powers – public health, domestic violence and homelessness. The appointment is a controversial one, in part because Baker is the author of a book arguing that the verdict of suicide in the death of former weapons inspector Dr David Kelly was ‘not credible’. Elsewhere, Jane Ellison has taken over as public health minister from Anna Soubry.

Serious and organised crime strategy at www.gov.uk 

The post Government announces new drug powers as Baker replaces Browne appeared first on Drink and Drugs News.

The DDN letters page, where you can have your say.

The August issue of DDN will be out on 2 September — make sure you send letters and comments to claire@cjwellings.com by Wednesday 28 August to be included.

 False dichotomy

In her open letter to Anna Soubry MP Dr Chris Ford draws an erroneous and largely unhelpful distinction between treating drug misuse as a health issue and treating it as a criminal justice issue.

In peer-reviewed research evaluating the impact of major drug enforcement operations on street-level drug markets it was found that the proportion of drug users contacting a methadone prescribing clinic increased massively from 30.2 per cent in the weeks in advance of the operations to 84.3 per cent in the weeks following the police operations (McGallagly and McKeganey 2012).

This research shows that drug enforcement operations can have a welcome positive impact on encouraging drug users into drug treatment. Instead of claiming that drug use is either a health or a criminal justice issue we need effective joint working between health and criminal justice agencies and a recognition that both domains have an equally important contribution to make in tackling drug misuse.

Ref: McGallagly, J., McKeganey, N. (2013) Does robust drug enforcement lead to an increase in drug users? Drugs: Education, Prevention, and Policy, 2013, Vol. 20, No. 1: Pages 1-4.

Neil McKeganey Ph.D, director, Centre for Drug Misuse Research, Glasgow

Self-help salvation

It is ridiculous for Ford and Soubry to be battling it out over whether addiction is a criminal or a health issue. It is the failure of the law and of medicine to understand and cure addiction that gives neither of them the right to even have an opinion.

Addiction is simply a current condition initiated by an individual making the mistake of choosing to use an addictive substance in an attempt to solve a ‘personal’ problem. It is straightforwardly a personal decision, made alone or in agreement with advice, which proves to be a mistake, and for which medical ‘treatment’ has never been an answer. Nor, as history shows, can criminal punishment resolve the country’s addiction problems.

When the coalition chose as the first strand of their 2010 drug strategy ‘reducing demand’, they knew what they were doing, because they were focusing on the source of our addiction problems – the individual addict. As they move towards ‘localism’ they are again focusing on the individual addicts that all inevitably exist in their local community.

It follows that reducing demand is achieved solely and only by curing individual addicts, and this is just not occurring other than sporadically as a result of medical treatment or criminal labelling or trying to restrict supply.

But it can be achieved by recognising that life is a do-it-for-yourself activity, that deciding to use drugs is also a do-it-for-yourself activity and that quitting addiction is most often achieved on a self-help basis.

Seventy to 75 per cent of addicts who have used for three days, three weeks, three months, three years or 30 years have tried, often daily, to quit and have failed – but still want to quit.

All they lack is the knowledge of how to attain lasting relaxed abstinence, and we know from the results of addiction recovery training delivered since 1966, and now at 169 centres (including prison units) in 49 countries, that 70-plus per cent can cure themselves.

So lets give addicts and the drug strategy a chance – by training drunks and addicts to cure themselves.

Kenneth Eckersley, CEO, Addiction Recovery Training Services (ARTS)

 35 years strong

Norwich charity NORCAS are celebrating 35 years of working in the region with a huge birthday party – all welcome!

Since 1978 when NORCAS opened its first alcohol service in Norwich they have gone on to provide drug, gambling and welfare rights services for many thousands of people across East Anglia. Now working in partnership with national substance misuse charity Phoenix Futures under the name Phoenix + NORCAS, the party will be an opportunity to hear inspirational stories of recovery, meet staff, volunteers and service users, past and present and to learn more about the plans for the future.

The party to be held on 22 August at OPEN, 20 Bank Plain, Norwich NR2 4SF, between 10.30am and 3.00pm, is open to all who want to drop in. Lunch and (of course birthday cake!) will be provided.

As Paul Hammond, Phoenix and NORCAS service manager says, ‘Over the last year alone NORCAS has worked with 8,342 adult and youth clients across Norfolk and Suffolk, and positively impacted the lives of many more through educational events. We want to thank the local community for the support they’ve provided us to help so many local people make positive changes in their lives.’

For more information go to www.phoenix-futures.org.uk/phoenix-norcas or contact me on bob.campbell@phoenix-futures.org.uk

Bob Campbell, special projects officer, Phoenix Futures

Help the aged

I have been trying to raise the profile of alcohol misuse in older people for some years, particularly as my own clinical service covers a population that has a rate of alcohol-related deaths in the 75-plus age group that is more than twice the national average.

Older people with alcohol problems remain caught between services. Luckily for me, I managed to gain additional skills in substance misuse and integrate these into a mainstream mental health of older adults service.

I would be interested to know whether practitioners see this as a growing clinical and public health problem and what is being done to tackle this problem in their local area or region.

Dr Tony Rao, consultant old age psychiatrist and chair of Royal College of Psychiatrists Substance Misuse Working Group

How lucky we are

Reading the coverage of the International Harm Reduction Conference really brought it home how lucky we are in the UK.

Sadly I was unable to attend in person but by reading the DDN Daily updates and the special issue I was able to get a real sense of the genuinely life-threatening situations that users in many countries face. It once again reinforced the indisputable fact that harm reduction saves lives.

To have the luxury of debating the individual nature of recovery and patient choice is something that many of the speakers at the conference must dream about, and we would do well to remember that. While the stories of the ongoing battle to have their drug use recognised as a health issue, and the ongoing human rights abuses were as harrowing as ever, there did seem some cause for cautious optimism.

The, albeit slowly, changing political acceptance that harm reduction works, the increasing high-profile support and, most importantly, the untiring work of the activists working across the world do give you hope that things will get better. I would like to thank both Harm Reduction International for having the courage to hold this unique event, and DDN for providing coverage to everyone unable to attend.

J Spence, by email

The post Letters appeared first on Drink and Drugs News.

The government is to create new powers to seize chemicals suspected of being used as cutting agents for illegal drugs, as part of its Serious and organised crime strategy. The move will ‘drive up the cost and risk for organised criminals’, it says.

Other measures set out in the strategy include doubling the size of HMRC’s criminal taxes unit – which uses tax interventions to ‘attack the finances’ of people involved in drugs trafficking and other offences – and moves to increase pubic recognition of offences, with the document citing a recent Home Office-funded ‘crimestoppers’ awareness-raising campaign on cannabis cultivation that led to a 25 per cent increase in public reporting. There will also be more use of intervention programmes around gangs and troubled families. 

The document states that, although drug use is falling in the UK, the country’s illegal drugs market is still worth around £3.7bn a year and is ‘controlled by organised crime’. The strategy ‘focuses on preventing people from getting involved in organised crime, improving Britain’s protection against serious and organised criminality and ensuring communities, victims and witnesses are supported when serious and organised crimes occur’, the government says. 

Meanwhile, Norman Baker has replaced Jeremy Browne as crime prevention minister in a government reshuffle. His responsibilities will include the drugs strategy, alcohol – including the Licensing Act and police and local authority powers – public health, domestic violence and homelessness. The appointment is a controversial one, in part because Baker is the author of a book arguing that the verdict of suicide in the death of former weapons inspector Dr David Kelly was ‘not credible’. Elsewhere, Jane Ellison has taken over as public health minister from Anna Soubry.

Serious and organised crime strategy at www.gov.uk 

The post Government announces new drug powers as Baker replaces Browne appeared first on Drink and Drugs News.