30 June 2003

GHB becomes a Controlled Drug

The Home Office announced that GHB would become a controlled drug with effect from 1st July 2003. A number of other substances were also added to the list of Controlled drugs.

The ACMD had recomended that GHB be added to the list of controlled drugs and the Government had consulted on the proposals. The move came in part because of the suggested links between GHB and drug-assisted sexual assaults.

Class and Schedule:
GHB becomes a Class C, Schedule 4.i drug. This means that possession without prescription will be unlawful, and at present, the maximum penalty for possession will be two years and supply will be five years.

However, until the Criminal Justice Bill 2002 completes its passage through parliament, POSSESSION of GHB will NOT be an arrestable offence. Once this bill becomes statute, the penalty for the supply of GHB (and other class C drugs) will increase to 14 years and possession of class c drugs will become an arrestable offence.

Strange comparisons:
While the addition of GHB to the list of controlled drugs is welcome, it does highlight the inadequacies of the current classification system. Once cannabis is reclassified, it will also be a class C drug. By placing both GHB and cannabis in class C, this suggests some sort of comparabilty in risk/safety between the two substances. This is clearly erroneous, and educators will need to stress that there is no equivalence between the two substances.

Links:
The Government postings on the reclassification are at:
HOC 39 - Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Modification) Order 2003 (SI 2003 No.1243) - Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2003 (SI 2003 No. 1432) 303kb

Changes to the Misuse of Drugs Legislation - Control of GHB and Seven Other Substances (Correspondence)

23 June 2003

Blunkett leaves UK drugs policy on disarray (again!).

A series of leaks and ad hoc policy decision, fuelled by sloppy reporting in the Sunday papers, have left the UK's drug policy in confusion once again. Having effectively killed off the prospects of extended diamorphine prescribing last week with their restrictive "guidance" document, the Government created further confusion over cannabis and premises legislation.

Cannabis
Since Blunkett first announced his intention to reclassify cannabis, the process has been mired in confusion and incompetence. The simplest move would have been to move cannabis to Class C, and make possession of it a non-arrestable offence but leaving supply an arrestable offence.

But rather than adopting this approach, the Home Secretary, either for personal reasons or under pressure from senior Police Officers, decided it was important that the power of arrest was retained, and so went through a series of half-thought through measures to achieve this.

Sine then, a variety of measures have been proposed: there was a proposal to create a three-strikes and your nicked approach to cannabis policing. Given that such an approach would have required a rather substantial data-base, such a plan seems to have been quietly dropped.

The second approach was to make cannabis possession an arrestable offence in certain limited settings, described as "aggravated possession." This included the notorious "blowing smoke in a police officers face" and other similar situations.

But the bottom line, as incorporated in to the Criminal Justice Act 2002 simply makes unlawful possession of Class C drugs an arrestable offence:

9 Power of arrest for possession of Class C drugs

In Schedule 1A to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (c. 60) (specific offences which are arrestable offences), after paragraph 6 there is inserted—
“Misuse of Drugs Act 1971
6A An offence under section 5(2) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (c. 38) (having possession of a controlled drug) in respect of a Class C drug (within the meaning of that Act).”

No reference to aggravated possession, no reference just to cannabis. The Government proposal is to issue guidance, agreed with ACPO, on when and where people should be arrested but this will only be guidance. Ultimately, local forces and ultimately individual officers will have personal discretion as to when they choose to arrest.

Effectively, the reclassification of cannabis, in practice, simply means that the maximum penalties for possession have been reduced; it will remain an arrestable offence and the penalties for supply will remain the same as they were for Class B drugs - 14 years.

To make matters worse, unable to reach decision about how to implement the revised strategy, it is now being proposed that the reclassification of cannabis be delayed until autumn at the earliest. Young people, already labouring under the misaprehension that cannabis is either now legal or will be from July, are going to be further confused.

This mess is entirely of Blunkett's making. It stems from a premature announcement of the decision to reclassify, before the details had been worked out, followed by a craven retreat from the decision as he came under pressure from the police and the media.

Use on premises:
A series of leaks and reports in the papers caused a flurry of concern that the Home Office wanted to widen the proposed powers incorporated into the Anti-social Behaviour Bill 2003. The legislation proposes creating new powers to close premises where premises are associated with the use or supply of class A drugs and also with nuisance or serious disorder.

It was widely reported that the Home Secretary wanted to extend this power to cover Class B and C drugs too. This is something we were concerned would happen when the legislation was first proposed, and it was a relief to see no such amendment was made when the Bill was discussed at committee stage. Again, the driving force behind this seems to have been the Home Secretary, being advised and pressured by unknown sources.

Further confusion is being caused by the current state of play regarding the status of Section 8(d) of the MDA; it is not clear either to the field or to the Home Office, whether organisations still have an obligation to prevent the smoking of cannabis on premises that they manage.

Under changes to the sentencing for class C drugs offences, organisations who allow cannabis smoking post reclassification (or indeed supply of Valium!) will face a maximum of fourteen years in prison. But first clarification is needed as to whether or not 8(d) is still enforceable at all.

Time for Blunkett to get off drugs!
Given the importance of drugs policy and strategy, it is essential that drug strategy is taken out of Blunkett's inept hands. Since he has taken over primary control over drugs strategy, it has been wholly subsumed by his crime and anti-social behaviour agenda.

Rather than listening to his advisors and those from other departments, he has leant to much of an ear to the police and too little to those who understand the field. It is time for a change in this process and the brief for managing drugs should no longer be left with Mr. Blunkett.

19 June 2003

New guidance on injectable heroin and injectable methadone treatment for opiate misusers

The NTA released the long-awaited guidance on the prescribing of injectable diamorphine and methadone on Friday 13th June 2003. Such an inauspicious publication date was matched with an equally inauspicious publication. While recognising that diamorphine and methadone prescribing has a limited role in substitute prescribing, the guidelines bind such restrictions around the prescribing of diamorphine as to make it more difficult, rather than less difficult to achieve than it is at present.

So, rather than extending the prescribing of diamorphine, the NTA has effectively done the reverse. Responses from the field have, to date, been muted. Discussions on the UKHRA boards have been vocal and critical of the guidance, asking how "how can the NTA have got it so wrong?"

Roger Howard, the soon-to-depart head of Drugscope, provided a quote of stunningly anodyne quality, even by his own standards. Presumably, in anticipation of a move to Crime Concern, he has no wish to upset Blunkett or AInsworth. Anyway, his comment on the guidelines was: "We welcome the NTA guidelines on heroin prescription and hope that they will lead to the situation found in other countries where, when other treatments have failed, there is an increase in users potentially being prescribed heroin."

How the report was developed:
The Guidance describes itself as a "majority consensus approach" which presumably means that there was some dissent from the expert groups, but this was the consensus of the majority, and the views and concerns of the minority have not gone on record.

Our understanding was that, in the final document, the views of the medical consultants, were given higher prominence and the report reflects their views rather than all the experts consulted.

The Eight "key principles."
The report outlines 8 key principles that underpin prescribing of injectables, as follows:
1. Drug treatment comprises a range of treatment modalities which should be woven together to form integrated packages of care for individual patients.

2. Substitute prescribing alone does not constitute drug treatment. Substitute prescribing requires
assessment and planned care, usually with other interventions such as psycho-social interventions. It should be seen as one element or pathway within wider packages of planned and integrated drug treatment.

3. Within the substitute prescribing modality, a range of prescribing options are required for heroin misusers requiring opioid maintenance. Some options may carry more inherent risks than others (e.g. injectable versus oral options). Patients who do not respond to oral maintenance drug treatment should be offered other options in a series of steps. This would normally include:
• oral methadone and buprenorphine maintenance, specifically optimised higher dose
oral methadone or buprenorphine maintenance treatment, then
• injectable methadone or injectable heroin maintenance treatment (perhaps in combination with oral preparations)

4. Injectable maintenance options should be offered in a local area that can offer optimised oral methadone maintenance treatment including adequate doses, supervised consumption and psycho-social interventions.
This is essential to ensure oral drug treatment options have been fully explored prior to a trial of injectable maintenance treatment and to ensure smooth transition back to oral treatment if required.

This is an interesting clause and appears to be an interesting piece of sleight of hand. On the one hand it places a level of obligation on providers to make options other than oral methadone available to people who do not respond to oral methadone. This would appear to suggest that local areas would be expected to make such resources available. However, subsequent clauses provide a number of limitations on this.

The requirement to provide "optimised higher dose oral methadone" is an interesting development. It suggests a tacit acknowledgement that methadone is still being prescribed at insufficiently high levels, and without necessary support in place. So before local agencies can explore any other options such as injectables, increases in levels of methadone and additional support will need to be explored.

Given that a number of regions still have ridiculously low caps on methadone, increasing this will require substantial movement from local prescribers.

5. Injectable and oral substitute prescribing must be supported by locally commissioned and provided mechanisms for supervised consumption. Injectable drugs may present more risk of overdose than oral preparations and have a greater value on illicit markets and hence may require greater levels of supervision.

6. Injectable maintenance treatment is likely to be long-term treatment with long-term resource implications. Clinicians should consider the move from oral to a trial of injectable preparations carefully, including long-term implications for the patient and drug treatment systems and involvement of services.

7. Specialist levels of clinical competence are required to prescribe injectable substitute drugs.
Heroin prescribing also requires a Home Office licence.

So despite Blunkett's assertion that an aim was to increase access to diamorphine prescribing, no changes to the archaic licensing system.

In the main body of the report, there is a proposal that all injectable opioids would require Home Office licence if being used for the treatment of addiction which could, in turn, have an impact on people currently prescribed injectable methadone.

8. The skills of the clinician should be matched with good local systems of clinical governance, supervised consumption and access to a range of other drug treatment modalities.

The detail and key areas of concern:

Supervision:
The requirements around supervised consumption are the most odious aspects of the guidance, and the aspect that will reduce stability and make the guidelines unworkable. Provision of supervised consumption - even for a short initial period, will dramatically increase the cost of the intervention. While diamorphine is already a more expensive option compared to methadone, the cost of twenty-plus supervised injections per week, at an average of 10+ worker hours per week, will cost in excess of £150/client/week in terms of supervision, before the cost of converting suitable premises are bourne in mind.

Certainly, supervised consumption on pharmacy sites would be difficult: it is hard to envisage many pharmacies would want to undertake this task, and the same is probably true for GP surgeries. Which means that such consumption will need to take place in drug projects.

The guidance proposes "there was great potential in providing injectable drug treatment from highly centralised injectable clinics" which is fine in large inner-city areas but means that, in rural areas, such provision is not feasible.

While the report notes that supervised consumption will require multiple daily attendances, but perceives this to be a welcome development:

The requirement for daily or multiple daily attendance was also discussed as requiring a significant change in current British provision (particularly out-of-office hours). Whilst such requirements may encourage the patient to progress towards improved outcomes, they are also very restrictive of liberty and represent a significant, but positive, change from previous practice in England. (emphasis added).

But, as policy development work for the Soho Rapid Access Clinic highlighted, this brings with it some complications around storage of CDs on site. Daily doses of drugs have to be delivered to the clinic and CD cabinets installed. Staff authorised under the MD regulations will need to be on site to dispense, and medically trained staff on site for emergencies. Three times a day. For maybe one or two clients who have to travel in three times a day.

Although this guidance says that local provision will need to be commissioned, there is no additional money to make such provision available. Again, the NTA will be able to blame the local providers for their failure to provide rather than looking at their own responsibility.

Eligibility Criteria:
The guidance provides strict limits as to eligibility, as follows:
Inclusion criteria for injectable opioid maintenance:
Clients should meet all of the following inclusion criteria in order to be eligible for injectable
opioid maintenance:
• The client should have a protracted history (> 3 years) of heroin dependence and regular daily injecting.

This was to be expected but also means that some clients for whom injectable methadone or heroin may be appropriate will be excluded. For example, amongst homeless drug users in central London, a high proportion had rapidly escalated habits over a short period of time, but had built up substantial injecting habits over less than three years.

• The client should be aged 18 or over.
• The client should be able to provide informed consent. This includes no active medical or psychiatric condition impairing the patient’s capacity to provide informed consent
• The client should be willing to comply with the conditions of injectable opiate treatment, including:
  •  a treatment plan
  • regular supervision and monitoring
  • avoidance of persistent injecting in high risk areas (e.g. neck or groin veins)
This is a big concern and excludes long-term femoral injectors. Again, looking at Central London homeless populations, the extent of femoral injecting is as high as 80%. This group would be excluded from such treatment, even where it may be an effective intervention.

• continuation of injectable treatment being conditional upon positive healthy response to treatment (which includes other treatment elements in a package of planned, co-ordinated care)
• diversion of the prescribed injectable drugs and “double scripting” being grounds for discontinuation of injectable treatment.
• The client should first have received optimised oral maintenance treatment - an adequate period (normally at least six months and for some this could be significantly longer) of optimised conventional substitution maintenance treatment and associated package of care.
• There should be a persistence of poor treatment outcomes despite a current optimised oral maintenance treatment episode. Indicators of poor outcomes may include:
• continued frequent (daily or almost daily) injecting of illicit heroin or other opioids
• patients at continuing high risk of the transmission of HIV, HBV or HCV to themselves or others
• continuing injecting-related health problems (e.g. abscesses, cellulitis, systemic infections), poor general health, poor psychosocial functioning and drug-related criminality.

This is a catch 22 and a nasty one at that. In order to get on to a diamorphine prescription, a patient would have to engage with optimised oral methadone for at least six months. Failure to adhere to such a programme (e.g. use on top, missed appointments) is likely to result in being dropped from treatment. But if someone does adhere to the optimised methadone treatment, then it seems likely that the clinician will adjedge the methadone as being effective and, as such, there would be no need to switch to injectable diamorphine.

This is the drugs equivalent of the ducking stool; if you sink and drown, you weren't a witch; if you float you are and get burned.

If the inclusion criteria are met injectable opioid maintenance treatment may then legitimately be considered by the clinician, in consultation with the patient, key carers and the relevant multidisciplinary team.

Ommissions:
The guidance seems to be a work in progress. It restricts and hampers the work of prescribing injectables without exploring how to overcome these barriers. The document offers no guidance on how supervised consumption can be practically achieved and creates substantial new obligations before injectables can be considered.

There is a failure to explore potential other routes of administration, including heroin reefers or other strategies for administration, or proposals for weekend take-home doses.

The model of thrice-daily supervision is hugely unworkable, and the exclusion of the most ill, those with impaired liver function and habitual femoral injectors excludes those most at need.

Conclusion:
After a long period of waiting, there is no sign here of more treatment, better treatment or fairer treatment. This report sides heavily against those who wish to see diamorphine made available on prescription in a practical and accesible way.

This is a case of style not substance. The Government will claim credit for more flexible prescribing policy, and will blame practitioners for failing to deliver what they have, in fact, made impossible.

Links:
To view the complete guidance, follow this link:
http://www.nta.nhs.uk/guidance/prescribing/HeroinFullGuideFINAL.pdf
Press Release: http://www.nta.nhs.uk/news/020115.htm

02 June 2003

TALK TO FRANK?

The Home Office unveiled its new "Talk To Frank" campaign in May. The linked campaign includes a telephone helpline service, a website and a new advertising campaign to promote the site. The launch and publicity campaign will cost £3m this year.
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page3766.asp

WHO is FRANK?
Talk to Frank is put together by a large number of agencies.

The PHONE SERVICE: The rebranded "Talk to Frank" service is provided by the Scottish-based Essentia Group. (http://www.essentiagroup.com/).

Essentia describe themselves thus:
Rewriting the rules of an entire industry, the Essentia Group is the UK's leading contact centre specialising in health and social welfare - a technology-based provider of governmental and commercial organisations’ information and advice services in the area of health and lifestyle management.

Essentia do operate a number of smoking and mental health services and have a track-record in substance use; presumably therefore, soem staff have a history of working with substances and new staff are receiving a level of training to achieve this level of competence.

THE ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN: The "Talk to Frank" campaign was designed by Mother working in conjunction with PHD. Mother are big players in Adland, and their roster includes such health-inducing products as Coca-Cola and environmentally sound companies as Unilever. Unfortunately they do not have a website but you can send them feedback on the FRANK campaign by clicking here: mother@mother.ltd.uk.

PR for the launch was handled by Fishburn Hedges, a London based PR company who also provided PR for Connexions.

The website and email interface was put together by EURO RSCG CIRCLE (aka Circle), a global digital marketing agency. Their website is at http://www.circle.com/contact/index.html

Reviewing FRANK
So is "Talk to Frank" any good. Reception from the mainstream drugs field was mixed. Roger Howard, was warmly receptive of the site and offered the following uncritical comments to the Guardian:

"Frank has been extensively trialed in the community where young people and their parents seem to be receptive to the campaign.

"Frank will hopefully provide better and more accurate information for young people and their parents to encourage them to talk to each other about this topic and we look forward to seeing the evaluation on the effectiveness of this in the future."

Much has been made by the Government and the media that the "Talk to Frank" campaign represented a step change away from "Just say no" approaches and a new, more honest and credible approach.

In reality however, the National Drugs Helpline had never promoted itself in this way; previous publicity campaigns for the Helpline had concentrated on the line as a source of factual information, such as the long-runnning ads about cocaine and ecstasy that were often on XFM in London.

Release welcomed the rebranding too, describing the new "Talk to Frank" approach as "more friendly" than the NDH.

There were a number of criticisisms of the NDH; the most important of these was the ridiculously short time window target for callers. Many callers were simply referred on to a local service, and call-handlers assiduously bundled potentially long callers - especially distressed parents - on to other services as quickly as possible. If "Frank" is really providing a better service, it will be interesting to see if there is a greater "depth" to the work, or it restricts itself to simple advice and referal on.

The Campaign:
The idea of "talk to Frank" was clearly intended to promote the idea of speaking to an informed friend: but the advertising company decided that the informed friend should be someone who sounds like he is white and male. Despite the fact that the campaign was trialled, this seems like a strage choice: why Frank? Why a male? How does this fit in with any sense of cultural diversity? Some organisations have disapproved of the way that the police have been portrayed in the adverts too.

Content: KFx has refered a number of errors on the Website to relevant bodies and is satisfied that they are being dealt with at the time of writing.

LINKS:
Talk To Frank http://www.talktofrank.com/
Guardian Web review: Frank has no cred: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,962418,00.html

Drug advice campaign is a wasted opportunity, say charities: Guardian: 23.5.03
http://society.guardian.co.uk/drugsandalcohol/story/0,8150,962322,00.html