Thursday 24 February 2011

Drug Addiction is a problem for doctors not policemen

Addiction to anything is a serious health problem, yet so many people are addicted or habitualised to so many things, from shopping and gambling through heroin and prescribed medication like methodone.

What they started on is not the issue - helping them to cope or overcome the addiction is a medical issue.

The problem is that the law unfairly and unjustly threatens to punish people addiction to some things / substances, but not others - even though they have not actually harmed anyone or committed other offences (if they have, then the law will deal with them)

For example: a heroin addict can be sent to prison or fined for simple possession for own use - an alcoholic can not be.   Why - if neither has done harm, surely they ought to be treated the same way and offered help, not courtrooms.

That threat of arrest is why so many addicts to drugs which are illegal to possess, where the only supply is criminalised, must feel deterred from seeking help earlier before all the other problems and associated crime become part of their lives too.

It is time the Government tried a new approach other than prohibition that is clearly failing and also brings its own problems (like £18 Billion bill annually to the taxpayers".

It is time the Government treated users of all drugs, the same.  There is no logical reason why some drugs should be totally banned yet available on the street, whereas others that are equally or more dangerous like alcohol is controlled.
  
Attempts to help Norfolk drug addicts turn lives around

5 comments:

  1. My comments to the norfolk story on the EDP were as follows:
    I'm sure that Richard and Duncan, who have their past lives ruined by drugs, started off on tobacco, not cannabis, a fact never mentioned. This gross misrepresentation of drugs far worse than cannabis, as emminent scientist Prof. Nutt pointed out, is a perpetuated trodden out dilemma surrounded by moralising and stifling stigmatisation. Politicians of all parties have no gumption to say so or change an outmoded misuse of drugs act, they dare not mention the many death caused by nicotine and alcohol abuse. Instead we are fed distorted stories as such. What young people need when they come out of school is jobs and apprenticeships, as soon as they leave school, they need to be occupied.. I congratulate Richard and Duncan on their personal goals, and condemn politicians for perpetuating harm and the criminalisation of young future taxpayers.

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  2. here is a letter from the home office , no doubt a revised responce :


    dear mr ^$&*$*&$&
    Drugs ruin lives and cause misery to families and communities across the country (BECAUSE OF PROHIBITION). They are estimated to cost the country £110 billion a year. This Government does not believe that decriminalization is the right approach. Its priorities are clear; it wants to reduce drug use, crack down on drug-related crime and disorder and help addicts come off drugs for good. However, there are no quick fixes, what the Government wants to achieve is a generational shift, to get people to take responsibility for their actions and free themselves from the vicious cycle of drug and alcohol dependency. The Government has recently launched a new cross-departmental drugs strategy. This strategy recognizes that focusing on reducing the harms cause by illicit drug use is no longer enough – we must focus on drug-free recovery as the most effective route out of dependency. We will be tightening the net on unscrupulous drug dealers, protecting vulnerable young people by preventing them from falling into a cycle of dependency. Our plans will encourage record numbers of people into treatment. Power and accountability to tackle drugs and the harms they cause will be passed to local areas. With the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners, the reform of the NHS and the creation of Public Health England, local partnerships will be responsible for designing and commissioning services that meet the needs of their communities. Government policy on drugs needs to stretch across departments. Our policy does just this, introducing joined-up programmers that will really help those who need it. The Ministry of Justice has recently launched its Green Paper Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders. This outlines measures to ensure that more drug misusing offenders fully recover from their addiction and that they do not take drugs while they are in prison. To achieve this, the Government are proposing to further reduce the availability of illicit drugs in prisons, to increase the number of drug free environments and to introduce pilots for drug recovery wings in prisons. The Ministry of Justice will also be working with the Department of Health and other government departments to support the design and running of pilots to pay providers by the results they deliver in getting offenders to recover from their drug dependency and to test options for intensive community based treatment. The Government has also introduced to Parliament via the Police Reform and Social a system of temporary bans on new ‘legal highs’. These bans will prohibit so called ‘legal highs’ while their health implications are properly considered by independent experts. This will help avoid the unacceptable delays that occurred under the previous Government in banning potentially dangerous substances.


    Kind regards(&^*%&^)

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  3. £100 billion is allot of money for nothing and im guessing they are not willing to part with it ,as the policy is not based on fact nor evidence , why remove the scientists is this to hide their skeletons? , if more people and children come to harm then so be it , they will be used as media reasons to push and reinforce more prohibition for reward at higher costs to the tax payer and public ,,on the other hand if drugs such as cannabis threaten alcohol sales or medicine sales while under prohibition im sure the lobby cats can foot a large persuader to fix it , very corrupt your may say , but then all corruption thrives on the unregulated , be it banks , drugs ,aide dealers or the governments themselves , im glad they mentioned "This Government does not believe that decriminalization is the right approach" because this i can agree with ,because its still not full regulation which is what was asked for , that would be full regulation on an evidence based model to a scale of harm , so they are still not answering the question , im not the only one that received this almost same worded letter

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  4. dear mr

    Drugs ruin lives and cause misery to families and communities across the country [BECAUSE OF PROHIBITION]. They are estimated to cost the country £110 billion a year. This Government does not believe that decriminalization is the right approach. Its priorities are clear; it wants to reduce drug use, crack down on drug-related crime and disorder and help addicts come off drugs for good. However, there are no quick fixes, what the Government wants to achieve is a generational shift, to get people to take responsibility for their actions and free themselves from the vicious cycle of drug and alcohol dependency. The Government has recently launched a new cross-departmental drugs strategy. This strategy recognizes that focusing on reducing the harms cause by illicit drug use is no longer enough – we must focus on drug-free recovery as the most effective route out of dependency. We will be tightening the net on unscrupulous drug dealers, protecting vulnerable young people by preventing them from falling into a cycle of dependency. Our plans will encourage record numbers of people into treatment. Power and accountability to tackle drugs and the harms they cause will be passed to local areas. With the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners, the reform of the NHS and the creation of Public Health England, local partnerships will be responsible for designing and commissioning services that meet the needs of their communities. Government policy on drugs needs to stretch across departments. Our policy does just this, introducing joined-up programmers that will really help those who need it. The Ministry of Justice has recently launched its Green Paper Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders. This outlines measures to ensure that more drug misusing offenders fully recover from their addiction and that they do not take drugs while they are in prison. To achieve this, the Government are proposing to further reduce the availability of illicit drugs in prisons, to increase the number of drug free environments and to introduce pilots for drug recovery wings in prisons. The Ministry of Justice will also be working with the Department of Health and other government departments to support the design and running of pilots to pay providers by the results they deliver in getting offenders to recover from their drug dependency and to test options for intensive community based treatment. The Government has also introduced to Parliament via the Police Reform and Social a system of temporary bans on new ‘legal highs’. These bans will prohibit so called ‘legal highs’ while their health implications are properly considered by independent experts. This will help avoid the unacceptable delays that occurred under the previous Government in banning potentially dangerous substances.


    Kind regards(&^*%&^)

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  5. sorry for the order , not used to this posting system

    ReplyDelete