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 aj123
smot poking
Registered: 09/08/08
Posts: 710
Loc: Easter island 
Last seen: 16 hours, 26 minutes
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 David Cameron shifts drug addicts treatment to live-in schemes [UK] 
#13013335 - 08/06/10 03:30 PM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
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David Cameron shifts drug addicts treatment to live-in schemes
• Target-obsessed approach did not work, says PM
• Voluntary sector will play key role in new policy
David Cameron plans to press ahead with an expensive shift in treatment for drug addicts, towards residential programmes and away from the use of methadone as a substitute licensed drug.
The prime minister has ordered a revised drugs policy to be in place by the end of the year, by which time the Department of Health and Home Office will have been told their budgets.
He is also planning to make the voluntary sector a lead body in delivery of the programme, so reducing, or possibly ending, the role of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse.
Speaking during a PM Direct debate this week, Cameron said: "The last government became too target obsessed. It was all about how many addicts are in touch with treatment agencies, and this, in too many cases, really meant the addict was talking to someone and maybe getting some methadone, which is a government authorised form of opium, rather than heroin. It did not really address the problem – that [the addict] had a drug habit.
"I would like to … try to provide – difficult though it will be given the shortage of money we have been left – more residential treatment programmes. In the end, the way you get drug addicts clean is by getting them off drugs altogether, challenging their addiction rather than just replacing one opiate with another."
It is the first time Cameron has spoken about drugs policy since he became prime minister, and reflects his strong view that methadone is just a state-sponsored form of addiction. Cameron has been looking at greater use of "payment by results" so that the voluntary sector is paid according to how long drug addicts are kept away from their substances.
A government source said: "This is something he feels very strongly about and it is going to be a priority across government. Labour just tried to sweep the problem under the carpet using methadone."
While in opposition shadow ministers, and the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), then chaired by Iain Duncan Smith, now work and pensions secretary, battled to extract information from the government on how many people were receiving methadone treatment, in prison and elsewhere.
Central and local government spend about £1.2bn a year tackling drug misuse in England. There are an estimated third of a million problem drug users in England. More than 200,000 are in contact with treatment agencies, but most are "maintained" on methadone or other synthetic opiates, at a cost of £300m a year, rather than pushed towards abstaining from drugs, whether prescribed or illegal.
Cameron's criticism closely follows analysis presented by the CSJ in a report last month calling for the National Treatment Agency to be scrapped and replaced by an "addiction recovery board" covering drugs and alcohol misuse
The CSJ claimed: "Since its inception the NTA has focused on simply moving addicts into treatment and processing them through a 12-week course of, usually, maintenance prescription … there is no strategy or incentive to reduce the numbers on maintenance treatment and move people into recovery."
The NTA disputed this analysis, and revised its thinking to ensure that no one stayed indefinitely on methadone.
The body said on its website that it had launched "an ambitious new blueprint to move people as quickly and safely as possible through treatment to recovery and re-integration in their local community". But from April 2012 the NTA, already suffering spending cuts, will cease to be a separate organisation and its functions will be transferred into the proposed Public Health Service.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/06/drug-addicts-treatment-david-cameron
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aj123
smot poking
Registered: 09/08/08
Posts: 710
Loc: Easter island
Last seen: 16 hours, 26 minutes
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Re: David Cameron shifts drug addicts treatment to live-in schemes [UK] [Re: aj123]
#13013418 - 08/06/10 03:43 PM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
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'The prime minister has ordered a revised drugs policy to be in place by the end of the year'
hmm promising?? They better be revising the whole thing or better still, scrap the whole misuse of drugs act!
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ShroomerRoss
Registered: 08/29/08
Posts: 4,444
Last seen: 9 months, 13 days
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Re: David Cameron shifts drug addicts treatment to live-in schemes [UK] [Re: aj123]
#13013470 - 08/06/10 03:54 PM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
aj123 said:
'The prime minister has ordered a revised drugs policy to be in place by the end of the year'
hmm promising?? They better be revising the whole thing or better still, scrap the whole misuse of drugs act!
im not going to get my hopes up, but i dont think could he possibly make the drugs policy any worse.
it can only be an improvment, right?
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ShroomerRoss
Registered: 08/29/08
Posts: 4,444
Last seen: 9 months, 13 days
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Re: David Cameron shifts drug addicts treatment to live-in schemes [UK] [Re: ShroomerRoss]
#13013503 - 08/06/10 04:00 PM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
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im still wandering whether nick clegg is going to pay any attention the the demands from your freedom website about the cannabis law being changed.
fucking false hope all the time
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 Tcm19277
Registered: 01/25/09
Posts: 1,067
Loc: S.E. UK
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Re: David Cameron shifts drug addicts treatment to live-in schemes [UK] [Re: ShroomerRoss]
#13014402 - 08/06/10 07:16 PM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
ShroomerRoss said:
Quote:
aj123 said:
'The prime minister has ordered a revised drugs policy to be in place by the end of the year'
hmm promising?? They better be revising the whole thing or better still, scrap the whole misuse of drugs act!
im not going to get my hopes up, but i dont think could he possibly make the drugs policy any worse.
it can only be an improvment, right?
qft
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