Britain now official drugs capital of Europe as more youngsters use cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines

Drug abuse in Britain is worse than anywhere else in Europe, a devastating analysis showed yesterday. Young people in the UK are more likely to take cocaine, Ecstasy and amphetamine than those in any other country on the Continent, it said. They are using cocaine in quantities and with a frequency unmatched anywhere else in the world apart from the U.S., the report found.

One in 20 schoolchildren of 15 and 16 - around 200,000 teenagers - have used the drug, it said. The analysis, by the European Union's drug agency, also pointed to levels of deaths from drugs that are higher here than in any other major nation in the EU. Only four small European countries - Luxembourg, Estonia, Norway and Denmark - lose a higher proportion of their young people in drug-related deaths, the report
said.

Deaths linked to drug abuse in Britain are, the figures suggest, running at double the rate of those in Germany and four times those in France. Ecstasy use 'remained consistently higher in the UK compared to other countries', said the report, from the Lisbon-based European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. It suggested that young Britons who would in the past have used amphetamine are switching in large numbers to cocaine.

The report said that four European countries now have a higher level of cocaine use than Australia, which has high levels. But only Britain 'reports a lifetime prevalence estimate that is similar to that of the U.S.A.'. The 5 per cent of teenagers and young adults who use cocaine in Britain is now ahead of levels in Spain, where links to South America have produced a cocaine boom in recent years.

Britain has seen cannabis use decline. The report noted that the UK had highest cannabis use in the mid-1990s but now ranks third. Eighty per cent of those who had stopped using cannabis 'cited a lack of interest', the report said.

The report came as a rebuke to ministers, who are trying to paint a picture of declining drug use among young people. They point to the controversial British Crime Survey as evidence of lower drug abuse. The European report showed that even the real good news for Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is qualified.

While cannabis use in Britain has been going down, young people in this country remain more likely to use the drug than those in any EU country apart from France and Denmark. Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'This report confirms Britain's status as the cocaine capital of Europe, not to mention the fact we also have the highest prevalence of amphetamine and Ecstasy use amongst adults.

'It is particularly disturbing that we have the highest proportion of 15 and 16-year-olds using cocaine - the Government's failure is betraying a whole generation of young people.' He added: 'This is due to Labour's chaotic, confused and staggeringly complacent approach to drugs. Drugs wreck lives, destroy communities and fuel crime - the fact Labour do not recognise this make them part of the problem, not the solution.'

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which advises Miss Smith, is holding an inquiry into whether Ecstasy should be downgraded from the most serious legal status of class A. Committee chief Professor David Nutt has indicated it could even be shifted to class C, the current category for cannabis, where police tend not to arrest users caught in possession. Links with tobacco smoking and with schizophrenia and other mental illness helped persuade ministers to return cannabis to class B next year. However, police chiefs have said they will not instruct officers to arrest users, which means the reclassification decision will have little effect. 7.11.08

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One in ten adults admits taking illegal drugs in the past year

One in ten adults admits using illegal drugs in the past year, startling new Home Office figures reveal. The statistics show that more people are taking the most harmful Class A substances than ten years ago. Of the three million people aged 16 to 59 who have taken at least one illegal drug over the past 12 months, almost a million admit using the hardest drugs, including cocaine, heroin and ecstasy. Almost 750,000 have snorted cocaine.

Critics say the figures expose the Government's failure to make inroads into the level of use of the most harmful drugs. But Ministers say the overall trend in illegal drug abuse is down and point to a fall in the numbers taking cannabis. Cocaine use has grown dramatically since 1997, and there are worrying signs that a generation of older drug-takers are continuing their habits into middle age.

Opposition critics blamed the growth on what they called Labour's 'mixed messages' on drug use and a failure to pursue effective treatment strategies. While some 200,000 drug users enter treatment each year, only around three per cent are drug-free at the end of their course.

The drug statistics are based on household surveys and officials admit they are almost certainly a significant underestimate of total use as they ignore under-16s, the homeless, students in halls of residence and addicts with chaotic lifestyles. More than a third of the 32million adults in Britain admit having used illegal drugs at some time of their life.

The proportion using hard drugs in the past year is three per cent, up from 2.7 per cent in 1998. They include 740,000 who admit snorting cocaine and 470,000 who took ecstasy. More than 9.6million people now admit using cannabis, of whom almost 2.4million - 7.4 per cent of adults - have taken it in the past year.

The highest rates of drug taking are in the 16-24 age group, where 42 per cent admit taking illegal drugs, including 21.3 per cent in the past year. Around 15 per cent have taken Class A drugs, and 18 per cent have used cannabis in the past year. There are worrying signs of increased use among older users, particularly of cocaine. The proportion of adults aged 25 to 29 admitting using Class A drugs has risen from 3.9 per cent in 1996 to 6.3 per cent.

For those aged 30 to 34 the figure has doubled to 3.8 per cent, and for 35 to 44-year- olds it has more than trebled, from 0.5 per cent to 1.7 per cent. Trends in overall drug use are more encouraging, mainly driven by a fall in past-year cannabis use - from 9.5 per cent of adults in 1996 to 7.4 per cent. The proportion of adults who admit taking any illegal drug over the past 12 months fell from 10 to 9.3 per cent last year. In 1996 the figure was 11.1per cent.

The Home Office released separate figures boasting of a record number of drug seizures, up from 161,000 to 186,000 last year. Recent increases, however, are mostly down to a huge rise in on-the-spot cannabis warnings by police. Users have their drugs confiscated but do not face arrest or a criminal record.

Home Office Minister Alan Campbell said last night: 'These statistics show that overall drug use continues to fall and is now at its lowest level for ten years. Our efforts in tackling drugs are clearly delivering results.' But Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'No amount of spin can hide the fact that Class A drug use and drug crime have risen under this Government, leaving Britain with the worst drug abuse problem in Europe.' 31.10.08

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Drug crime up as Home Office admits police have been under-recording serious offences for the past 10 years

Public trust in crime statistics has been dealt a devastating blow after ministers admitted the figures have been downplaying serious violence for up to a decade. The Home Office admitted that as many as one in five of the worst attacks has been wrongly classified in published figures.

As many as 4,000 serious assaults each year were mistakenly recorded as minor incidents - and officials conceded they 'simply do not know how far back it goes'. The tightening of the rules has seen figures for serious violent crimes rocket by 22 per cent compared to last year - and confusion over the figures makes it impossible to say how much of the rise is genuine. Ministers blamed the blunders on police officers, who were wrongly classifying cases of 'grievous bodily harm with intent' as minor assaults.

But if this is the case it is unclear why the practice was allowed to continue for so long unchecked. Police have been placed under severe pressure by ministers to reduce the level of serious violence on the street. Critics may claim this provided an incentive for officers to downplay the gravity of assaults where - while the intent was grave - the actual injuries suffered were minimal. In a sign of the chaos the Metropolitan Police yesterday took the unprecedented step of halting publication of its violent crime figures to check whether they meet the guidelines.

Senior police chiefs admitted the problems affected all 43 forces in England and Wales. Critics claimed the revelations were another serious blow to the credibility of Government crime figures following years of complaints of spin and statistical manipulation. The confusion makes it impossible to tell whether serious violence rose or fell last year - although there are indications of a significant increase in serious knife attacks.

There are also grave questions over repeated statements by ministers in recent years stressing the minor nature of many recorded offences. The blunder centres on the way vicious attacks are logged at police stations. Officers generally class an assault as grievous bodily harm if the victim suffers a cut to their skin or a broken bone. But the rules also state that where an attacker tries but fails to inflict such an injury police should record the assault as GBH rather than a lesser offence - in the same way that attempted murder is treated as a serious offence even if the intended victim is unharmed. Where a thug tries to smash a bottle in a victim's face but causes only a nosebleed, for example, police should recorded the incident as GBH.

It now transpires many officers had been downgrading such incidents to lesser charges of actual bodily harm or common assault - which fall outside the Home Office's definition of 'most serious violence against the person'. In the latest quarterly figures published yesterday the category of 'most serious violence against the person' had leapt by 22 per cent year on year. It rose from 4,500 in the second quarter last year to 5,500 in the same period this year, equivalent to around 60 a day.

But ministers said the startling rise was largely because police across the country were ordered earlier this year to follow counting rules more rigorously when logging crimes. This 'clarification' by the Home Office quickly revealed that many serious assaults were being wrongly recorded.

The Home Office's head of statistics Paul Wiles said: 'We simply don't know how far back this goes. The people doing the recording are constantly changing and retiring.' He said there was evidence that two-thirds of the 22 per cent increase in serious violence was caused by the new counting rules. Warwickshire Chief Constable Keith Bristow, for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: 'This is an issue that affects all police forces to a greater or lesser degree.' Home Office police minister Vernon Coaker denied the blunders were embarrassing, saying: 'I want the statistics to be as clear as possible.'

But Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'These figures fatally undermine government spin that violent crime was getting better. Labour should now face up to the reality of their failure and realise that if you can't count a problem, you can't combat it.'

STABBINGS SOAR
Violent crime was broadly stable in the year to June, according to the Home Office. But confusion over the figures means the department cannot be sure whether serious violent assaults were also stable or whether they rose as much as 7 per cent since last year. There are signs that more serious knife crime did increase.

Figures for serious stabbings rose 29 per cent, from 1,253 in the second quarter of 2007 to 1,616 in 2008 - equivalent to an extra 1,500 stabbings each year. Home Office statisticians said a third of that increase was due to the tighter recording rules, but that still leaves a 20 per cent year-on-year rise.

Use of knives in sexual offences was counted separately for the first time, revealing there were 8,610 incidents in the three months to June - equivalent to 34,440 per year, or almost 100 offences per day. Recorded gun crime was down 6 per cent, from 9,862 in the year to June 2007 to 9,306 the following year.

DRUG CRIME UP 8%
Drug offences continue to buck the trend of falling overall crime. Between 2007 and 2008 recorded drug crimes were up 8 per cent, with 59,000 cases logged by police in the second quarter of this year, up from 55,600. The rise is equivalent to an extra 17,000 drug offences each year, and continues a long-term upwards trend.

Recent quarterly crime bulletins have shown year-on-year rises of 14, 21 and 22 per cent. In contrast, overall crime fell 6 per cent year-on-year, from 1.3million offences in the second quarter of 2007 to 1.2million in 2008. Ministers claim the rise in drugs crime reflects greater use of formal warnings for possession of cannabis, which do not carry a criminal record or any other punishment. The warnings have been popular with frontline officers because they count as a 'solved' crime, helping hit Government targets, without taking up hours of their time. 24.10.08

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Drug policies just make addiction worse

The fruitless battle to access help for her drug addict daughter convinced Kate McKenzie that heroin should be prescribed on the NHS. To most people looking at my life from the outside, I seemed to have a pretty perfect existence. Two beautiful daughters, now aged 18 and 21, my husband a finance director on a good salary and for me an interesting career designing interiors for historical buildings. We lived in a beautiful Georgian property in Brighton overlooking the sea – picture perfect!

Yet when I sat next to people at dinner parties and was asked what my children did, my answer shattered that picture. My eldest daughter Hannah has been a heroin addict now for over three years, a fact I have never tried to hide.

Shocking people with my answer, it always provoked a response, yet never the one I expected. Many people would then confide that their son, daughter, niece, nephew or friend had drug problems too, and then the whole sorry tale of addiction poured out. It seemed to me that there is a large sector of society that keeps this pain hidden, too embarrassed to admit to having a drug addict in the family. Somehow, we believe that drug addiction only happens on sink estates in the deprived areas of large cities. But heroin takes no notice of income, class, race or religion. It feeds on vulnerability and that can be found anywhere.

During the past three years spent trying to get help for my daughter I became enmeshed in the most complex, bureaucratic and punitive system involving social services, housing, hospitals and, of course, the police. To someone like me, reasonably intelligent, articulate and not off my head on drugs, it was an absolute nightmare to navigate around the system; for a confused addict it was impossible. I spent my days arguing with the various agencies trying to access help and support, and my nights rehearsing my daughter's funeral in my head. No wonder that after two years I had a breakdown. Fortunately, it was probably the best thing that happened to me and allowed me at last to take a step back and look at the wider picture.

It was at this point that Hannah and I met Jane Treays and decided to take part in the Cutting Edge documentary, Mum, Heroin and Me, which will be broadcast on Thursday night. We both felt very strongly that the film would dispel many of the myths surrounding heroin, highlighting just how awfully depressing and dull the life of an addict really is.

I wanted people to know that the bureaucratic systems were simply unworkable when dealing with people who could not or would not work within their constraints. I began to realise that if heroin was prescribed to long-term addicts it would remove the pressure of how to obtain the money for the next fix. This would then allow addicts to access the help they really need, and so doing would benefit the rest of us who are victims of their life of crime. Ultimately, I hope that the government will change its policies on drugs in order to protect our vulnerable teenagers from this epidemic and to help those already in its grip.

For Hannah, seeing her life unfold on film has at last made her realise how sordid it had become, and she flew to South Africa last Saturday to start a five-month detox. For me, the last year has seen my marriage disintegrate and my health suffer. To have my daughter back fit and whole is all I ask. Channel 4 23.10.08

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The bureaucracy of drug addiction needs drug addicts far more than drug addicts need the bureaucracy of drug addiction.

For the past 14 years, I have worked as a doctor in a large general hospital in a deprived area of Britain , and in the even larger prison next door. In that time, I have seen heroin addiction rise from an infrequently encountered problem to a mass phenomenon. It has now become so widespread that the city council has politely asked residents not to put used needles and syringes in the weekly rubbish collections. No stairwell in any housing estate is complete without the discarded paraphernalia of drug abuse.

If an increase in the number of heroin addicts such as Britain has experienced in the last few decades - up from a very few in the 1950s (there were only 62 known cases in Britain in 1958, 67 in 1968, and as late as 1978 there were only 859, when heroin addicts were still few enough to be registered individually by the Home Office, which no doubt underestimated the numbers, but not by orders of magnitude) to well over 100,000 by the year 2000 and up to 195,000 in 2007 - constitutes an epidemic, it is an epidemic of a very strange kind, one that is spread by the psychological contagion of bad ideas and bad desires rather than by the physical contagion of bad germs.

Drug-addiction services have also grown massively. In our society, every problem calls forth its equal and supposedly opposite bureaucracy, the ostensible purpose of which is to solve the problem. But the bureaucracy quickly develops a survival instinct, and so no more wishes the problem to disappear altogether than the lion wishes to kill all the gazelle in the bush and leave itself without food. In short, the bureaucracy of drug addiction needs drug addicts far more than drug addicts need the bureaucracy of drug addiction. The propaganda, assiduously spread for many years now, is that heroin addiction is an "illness". This view serves the interests both of the addicts who wish to continue their habit while placing the blame for their behaviour elsewhere, and the bureaucracy that wishes to continue in employment, preferably for ever and at higher rates of pay.

Viewing addiction as an illness automatically implies there is a medical solution to it. So, when all the proposed "cures" fail to work, addicts blame not themselves but those who have offered them ineffectual solutions. And for bureaucracies, nothing succeeds like failure. The Government spends £384m a year on drug treatment alone, despite there being little evidence of any reduction in the number of addicts and only achieving a 3% success rate, however the true cost is much more startling:

Since the bureaucratic solution to waste is to waste even more, you don't have to be Nostradamus to predict that funding in Britain will continue to rise. Before the expansion of heroin addiction in my city, I knew little about it. I'd known a few addicts in the higher echelons of society, but they had been peculiar even before their addiction. I had briefly run a drug-addiction clinic in a famous university town, at a time when I accepted what I now know to be myths about heroin addiction. But as more addicts came to my attention – I see up to 20 new cases a day in prison – I began to think about it more.

The medical perspective, that these people were ill and in need of treatment, seemed less and less convincing. I discovered that most addicted prisoners stopped taking heroin in jail, even when it was available. They came into the prison starving and miserable, and went out relatively healthy. But within a few months, many were back in their former condition, and when brought once more before the courts, some would beg to be imprisoned. When, soon after their return, I asked them whether they intended to give up taking heroin, some would reply: "I'll have to, I've got no choice." Asked why, they would offer replies such as: "Because my girlfriend's just had a baby and she won't let me see it unless I do."

This answer was a strange one if these addicts truly thought of themselves as ill and in need of treatment. Instead, they clearly believed a purpose in life was enough to enable them to abstain. This is not how pneumonia, for instance, is cured. No one would say: "I must stop having pleuritic pain each time I breathe deeply because I have just had a baby." Yet the medical services allow addicts to focus exclusively on the physiological aspects of addiction, which in practice means the prescription of a drug such as methadone.

It's very hard work to become an addict

Going cold turkey is quite easy

People choose to get hooked...

There is a strenuous, almost outraged, rejection of the idea that addiction is, at bottom, a moral problem, or even that it raises any moral questions at all. Of course, addiction to heroin and other opiates has serious medical consequences. I often saw addicts with deep vein thromboses or multiple abscesses; they would have TB; they would be malnourished and infected with Hepatitis B or C, or both, and HIV. It would be difficult to obtain blood from the veins in their arms or legs because they had injected so often. But medical consequences do not make a disease. Many mountaineers get frostbite, but mountaineering is not a disease. To conceive of heroin addiction as such seems to me to miss the fundamental point: it is a moral or spiritual condition that will never yield to medical treatment.

Having started with a vague supposition that the medical approach to addiction must be right, I came to a different conclusion: that such an approach, having started no doubt as an honest attempt to help addicts, now represented a combination of moral cowardice, displacement activity and employment opportunity. The therapeutic juggernaut rolls on. It is easier, after all, to give people a dose of medicine than a reason for living. That is something the patient must minister to himself. In coming to these conclusions, I felt I was living in a world in which the plainest of truths could neither be said out loud nor acknowledged.

Every day I saw addicts selling their prescription drugs or continuing to take heroin and any other drug they could get; addicts who, despite their "treatment", continued to commit crimes; addicts openly contemptuous of attempts to help them, who lied to and manipulated their helpers shamelessly; and addicts who had, without any assistance, given up heroin completely. Above all, I observed the true triviality of heroin withdrawal symptoms. Yet my observations did not seem to matter. It was almost impolite, and increasingly impolitic, to mention them to colleagues who dealt with addicts, though they must have observed the same things.

I felt like a heretic who had better keep his beliefs to himself. Had I not been lucky enough to work with three eminent physicians who had observed precisely what I had, and drawn the same conclusions, I might have broken down. The orthodox view of addiction is that a person is somehow exposed to heroin more or less by chance. It has a pleasurable effect, and he or she keeps taking it. Before long, the person is addicted and, to avoid the terrible suffering of withdrawal, must take more. Of course, to pay for this, addicts usually resort to crime, for their addiction precludes normal paid work but requires a large income. All powers of self-control are destroyed by heroin, and unless they take a substitute drug, such as methadone, or enter a lengthy rehabilitation programme, addicts cannot give up. They are hooked for life and need help – from the drug-addiction bureaucracy. There is only a tiny grain of truth in all this. That physiological addiction exists is indisputable. But in practically all other respects the standard view is wrong, a masterpiece of rhetorical tricks.

It is to heroin addicts what Marxism was to the Politburo of the former Soviet Union : a systematic pseudo-scientific justification for everything they do. The orthodox view is self-serving for addicts because it implies no possibility of self-control and so no blame. What, perhaps, is more surprising is that many doctors, therapists and social workers swallow such nonsense. The truth is people who are genuinely exposed to strong opiates by chance, such as after an operation, rarely become addicted to them. It might once have been the case, before awareness of the addictive properties of heroin was so general, that unsuspecting people were introduced to the habit by others and were thus "hooked". Whatever may have been the case in the past, this is not a plausible explanation now.

Children may no longer know the date of the Battle of Hastings, but they know heroin is addictive. Many addicts say they did not know what they were getting themselves into when first they took heroin, but this is not credible; they could not have failed to know. Again, the standard view is that the process of becoming addicted to heroin is swift. The future addict has to take the drug only a couple of times and then – hey presto – his willpower is gone. He is hooked forever. But actually, you have to work quite hard to become a heroin addict. It is not something that creeps up on you unnoticed. In fact, addicts are people intent on rebelling against received norms. They enjoy the feeling of swimmy calm that heroin produces and make a free choice to become an addict. Nor are the withdrawal symptoms from heroin anywhere as terrible as normally painted. In the popular conception, going "cold turkey" is dreadful beyond all description, involving cramps, insomnia, vomiting, shaking and sweating.

But not a single addict has ever caused me as a doctor to feel anxiety for his safety on account of his withdrawal. And all the genuine symptoms, which are never severe, such as muscular aching, diarrhoea, crying, sneezing and insomnia, have been relieved by simple, non-opiate medication. Certainly, most withdrawing addicts have portrayed themselves to me as being in the grip of dreadful suffering. They writhe in agony, claiming they have experienced nothing as bad in their lives, and they make all kinds of threats if I do not prescribe "something" – they mean an opiate – to alleviate their suffering. The threats range from damaging their cells to killing themselves, others or even me. (Withdrawing alcoholics never make such threats.) In fact, heroin addicts rarely carry out their threats. Those who say they are suicidal quickly admit they were merely trying to get methadone when I suggest they be put in a cell so bare that there is nowhere from which to suspend a noose.

My counter-threat produces in most cases the most miraculous improvement in their mood. Not all the addicts I see exaggerate in this fashion. Some admit with a laugh that anyone who says cold turkey is terrible is lying and more than likely trying to bluff his way to getting methadone.

As long ago as the Thirties, experiments showed that salt solution could be substituted for morphine without the addicts' knowledge, and they could be deceived out of their withdrawal symptoms. Yet the established fact that withdrawal from opiates is not a serious medical condition is a truth universally ignored by doctors. The great glory of withdrawal agony, from a career point of view, is that where suffering exists, it is necessary to employ more and more doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers and counsellors to relieve it. Yet consider what happened in China after Mao took power in 1949. At the time, China had more opiate addicts than the rest of the world put together – about 20million.

But Mao gave them a strong motive to give up: he shot the dealers and any addicts who did not give up their habit. Within three years, Mao produced more cures than all the drug clinics in the world before or since, or indeed to come. He was, indeed, the greatest drug worker in history. The point of this story is not to advocate a repetition of Mao's methods. It is to demonstrate that, when a motive is sufficiently strong, many millions of addicted people can abandon their addiction without the paraphernalia of help considered necessary today.

It demonstrates that people take heroin out of choice, ultimately, and so can stop out of choice. Addicts are not blameless victims of some terrible illness they have no control over.

Almost everything you know about heroin addiction is wrong.

Based on his experience as a prison doctor and as a psychiatrist in a large general hospital in Birmingham, Dr. Dalrymple argues that addiction to heroin is not an illness at all, and that doctors only make it worse. They deceive both the addicts and themselves by pretending that they have something to offer.

In this brilliant, entertaining and provocative book, Theodore Dalrymple explains how and why a literary tradition dating back to De Quincey and Coleridge, and continuing up to the deeply sociopathic William Burroughs and beyond, has misled all Western societies for generations about the nature of heroin addiction. These writers' self-dramatizing and dishonest accounts of their own addiction have been accepted uncritically, and have been more influential by far in forming public attitudes than the whole of pharmacological science. As a result, a self-serving, self-perpetuating and completely useless medical bureaucracy has been set up to deal with the problem.

With scathing wit, implacable logic and savage denunciation, Dr. Dalrymple exposes the mythology surrounding heroin addiction. Moving seamlessly between literature, pharmacology, history and philosophy, he demonstrates what happens when the nature of a social problem is so thoroughly misunderstood, and when human beings are regarded as inanimate objects rather than as agents of their own destiny. His scintillating, iconoclastic little book has an importance far beyond its immediate subject matter.

Junk Medicine: Doctors, Lies And The Addiction Bureaucracy, by Dr Theodore Dalrymple, is published by Harriman House Publishing on August 27, 2007 , priced £14.99. Click here to order . 18th August 2007

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Perpetuating the Addiction Myth

The book, The Truth about Addiction and Recovery makes a very compelling argument that the "disease theory" of addiction, especially for alcohol and drugs, is completely wrong. Common dogma says that "Addiction is a disease." Researchers explain addictions are caused by endorphins, chemicals the brain secretes in pleasurable moments. Addicts chase the high from endorphins, as the theory goes. There's just one problem: It's never been proven.

"Addicts can't stop themselves." "They'll be addicted for the rest of their lives." "They must never smoke or drink again!" Again, all are myths. Smokers, drinkers and even drug users have stopped on their own or with effective treatment.

As for drug users, there have been several studies affirming that people do quit drugs and don't give into temptations to use them; one study followed Vietnam vets: Many used heroin while in combat, but few continued using it after they came home. Consider how many people experimented with drugs during the '60's, yet this did not lead to mass addiction in the 70's.

Addicts are "cured" by treating them in hospital-based programs. Yet, there's no evidence that they don't get people off drugs or alcohol any faster or more effectively. In fact, they may even hinder recovery. The typical hospital-treatment program for drug and alcohol addicts imposes these premises on the patient: "You have a disease", "You are an addict", "You will be addicted for the rest of your life", "You are in denial", "You must turn to other addicts for guidance". Many of these programs impose a coercive environment so that addicts can "come to terms" with their addiction. Many of these programs are physically abusive, but the worst part of treatment, though, is the way that clients have their identities forced upon them. No longer are they housewives, teachers, executives or writers–they are addicts! Forever.

People need treatment in the context of their lives, and encouraged to overcome their addictions among family and friends. Well-balanced people, rather than addicts, are their models. Most importantly, people under treatment develop an identity of their own, without coercion.

Claims that the 12-Step/Disease Concept of recovery is the most successful treatment ever devised are what we hear. The reality is that these treatment paradigms have consistently demonstrated outcomes ranked lowest among the various options studied. The Ditman Study provided evidence that AA is no more effective than no treatment at all. The AA itself conducts surveys. The AA Monograph, Comments on AA's Triennial Surveys, revealed this surprising result regarding new member dropout rates:

At one month, the percentage of those that have remained is 19%, at 3 months 10%, and at 12 months 5%. This is a 5% success rate at the one-year point if success is simply defined as continuing AA membership. Because AA considers addiction a chronic, progressive disease, these findings make it ironic that the 12-Step model is described as a “program for life”.

There is an opposing viewpoint to that of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Narcotics Anonymous (NA), and all other twelve-step mutual-help support groups, that these groups, unfortunately, are part of the problem, not the solution. They only serve to perpetuate myths that have clearly been proven false based upon the vast amount of research that has been done in the field of substance abuse.

All twelve-step support groups teach the disease model of addiction, which was popularized by AA and adopted by professional organizations and government agencies. The disease model of addiction is intellectually sloppy and unscientific. This model does much more harm than good because it undermines peoples' feelings of self-control. Here are its basic premises: Addicts inherit the disease of addiction. They are born with this disease and are therefore already addicts long before they ever use drugs/alcohol.

Their disease is characterized by loss of control and progression. In other words, addicts can never control their drug/alcohol use and their disease inevitably gets worse and worse. Their only hope is to remain completely abstinent from all drugs and become a lifelong member of a twelve-step support group. This definition of the 'disease concept' is from the book of Narcotics Anonymous.

Counsellors, AA members, and other disease proponents often talk about inheriting "the gene for alcoholism." These genes have never been found (although a lot of time and money has been spent looking for them). Most researchers, in fact, agree that it is highly unlikely that any such genes exist. A study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on April 18, 1990, linking alcoholism to a specific gene. The study was accompanied by press releases, news conferences, and interviews with the researchers. Eight months later another study was published in JAMA that reported a lack of association between alcoholism and this gene (the dopamine D2 receptor gene). Of course this study was not publicized like the original study and most people never heard of it. They still believe that the alcoholism gene has been found.

All scientific attempts to define an addict have failed because the concept itself is fundamentally flawed. Addicts exist in our minds but not in the objective world around us. The DSM-III-R, which is the authority on psychiatric disorders, contains two categories of pathological patterns of substance use: abuse and dependence.

It's important to note, that the criteria used to diagnose alcohol problems is exactly the same as those for all other substances. The American Psychiatric Association (APA), therefore, doesn't appear to believe that alcohol abuse is any different from that of other substances. Once the person stops using the substance, he no longer meets the criteria for abuse or dependence. In other words, he is no longer an addict or an alcoholic. This is what is known as all-or-nothing thinking, either you are or aren't an alcoholic or a drug addict.

Experts claim the trouble with the drug and alcohol treatment industry and twelve-step support groups is, they take those people with the worst success in controlling their own behaviour and allow them to tell the rest of us what our attitudes should be. If you tell people enough times that they have no hope of controlling themselves, they will eventually start to believe you and prove you right.

Loss of control over drugs and alcohol is much more a cultural phenomenon than it is a symptom of a disease. Take for example the Italians. They respect their alcohol. They drink beer or wine at every meal but only drink one or two glasses. They think of alcoholism as a problem over which people can exert control and they object to those who become intoxicated. The Italians have the lowest alcoholism rates.

Another reason that the disease concept is so popular is that it gives people an easy way out. They believe that they inherited their addiction, therefore they're not responsible for their own behaviour. At first glance this practice may seem helpful. The argument is that it absolves substance abusers of blame and therefore makes them more likely to enter treatment to get help. But keep in mind two things about calling addiction a disease:

1. It's not true.
2. It doesn't help and keeps the individual from doing things that really would help.

People believe that alcoholism and drug addiction are diseases because they want to believe it. It makes them feel better to think that their problems are beyond their control. Most people desperately search for something outside of themselves to blame things on. Real solutions to real problems, however, will never result from ignorance and misinformation.

The truth is most drug and alcohol 'treatments' is ineffective, and therefore a waste of money. Substance abuse is a problem that is never going to be completely prevented and it's never going to be solved using current ineffective treatment methods.

What goes on in treatment anyway? Patients in treatment centres are coerced by the counsellors and other patients to "discover" that they have the disease of addiction. They are shown a list of symptoms (blackouts, loss of control, progression of the disease, etc), and told to admit that they have them. If they claim that they never experienced one or more of these symptoms they are harassed in an effort to combat their denial.

The concept of denial is a dangerous one because as soon as people claim they don't have a problem, it means they really do have it. Denial is viewed as a symptom of the disease. People who have the worst substance abuse problems, on the other hand, are often those who cannot gain a foothold in life. They more often come from deprived environments or from seriously disrupted homes, or have severe personal or emotional problems. Drugs do not make people indolent, antisocial, or delinquent. Rather, people choose to use drugs because drugs allow them to feel and act in ways they need or want to.

New statistics suggest that while more money is being thrown at drug treatment programmes, the number of people leaving them free of their dependency on drugs has barely increased. According to figures from the National Treatment Agency (NTA), spending on drugs services reached £384m last year, up from £253m in 2004-05.

In 2004, 5,759 people left drug treatment free from their addiction, compared with 5,829 in 2006, that's an extra 70 people for the extra £131m spent. The proportion of people who are completely drug-free after treatment is actually falling, down to a lowly 3 per cent. However the rate of 3% is nothing more than the natural rate of remission, meaning that, at least 3% a year will quit using drugs because they have simply had enough and want to be drug free, with this in mind the actual success rate and the sum total of all spending on drug treatment services equals a 0% success rate.

A source said, 'the only way to change the present system is to change their pay structure, if the drug bureaucrats were paid for results and a bonus system for each person who 'recovered' then all manner of treatment would be used to try and achieve this goal, instead the current pay structure offers no incentives for recovery, in fact, it's just the opposite, for example the restructuring of pay scales in dentistry has seen a dramatic fall in unnecessary dental work'. 15.10.07

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Drink and drugs 'key' to suicide

Alcohol and drug misuse means Scots are almost twice as likely as people south of the border to take their own life or kill, a new report has said.

Research from Manchester University also showed the number of mental health patients killing themselves or others was proportionately higher in Scotland. The report found that the north-south divide was highest among teenagers. It said alcohol and drugs were the "most pressing mental health problems in Scotland". The Lessons for Mental Health Care in Scotland report was commissioned by the Scottish Government. Researchers found there were 500 killings north of the border over five years and 5,000 suicides over six years. Suicide rates in Scotland were 18.7 per 100,000 of the population, compared with 10.2 per 100,000 in England and Wales.

Of the 1,373 patient suicides in the report, there was a history of alcohol misuse in 785 cases, an average of 131 deaths per year. There was a history of drug misuse witnessed in 522 cases, or 87 deaths per year. About 28% of people who took their own life and 12% of killers had recently been mental health patients, the report said.

Louis Appleby, professor of psychiatry at Manchester University, said the findings suggested that alcohol and drugs lay behind Scotland's high rates of suicide and homicide. He called the frequency with which they occurred as antecedents as "striking". Professor Appleby added: "Alcohol and drug misuse runs through these findings and it appears to be a major contributor to risk in mental health care and broader society.

"Our findings support the view that alcohol and drugs are the most pressing mental health problems in Scotland and mental health services can play their part."

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£1.85m to get each person off drugs - Drug services make slow progress

Treatment services in England have made slow progress in increasing the numbers of people they get off drugs, despite a £130m rise in their budget. Spending on drugs services rose from £253m in 2004-05 to £384m last year, National Treatment Agency figures show. Yet the numbers emerging from treatment free of addiction has barely changed. Three years ago, 5,759 left drug-free compared with 5,829 last year. The Department of Health said the figures "distort the true picture".

BBC home editor Mark Easton said fewer than 3% were drug-free after treatment. The government had always maintained treatment was not just about getting people off drugs - it also cut crime, improved health and helped users get their lives straight, our correspondent added. The government is committed to getting people into "effective treatment" which can do something to make their lives better which has "benefits for wider society".

However, he said analysis of the recently published figures showed the proportion of people getting off drugs after treatment had fallen from 3.5% three years ago to less than 3% now. And the figures meant that the cost of getting each person off drugs over this three-year period worked out as £1.85m.

Mr Easton also said that the government's ten-year strategy, due to be launched next April and about which a statement is due soon, is "about getting more people off drugs". Earlier this month, it emerged that heroin and cocaine addicts on the same government treatment programme were being given drugs as a reward for clean urine samples.

The National Treatment Agency's own survey of almost 200 clinics in England found users were being offered extra methadone, a heroin substitute, or anti-depressants for good behaviour. It admitted the practice was "unethical" and offering drugs for anything other than clinical need was wrong. Health minister Dawn Primarolo asked for a report into the survey.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said: "In the last few years, there has been a massive expansion in the numbers entering drug treatment. "It generally takes between five and seven years for an addict to successfully complete their treatment, and therefore it would be unrealistic to expect to see the results of this expansion in treatment immediately.

"Getting users into treatment and keeping them there is the best way to save their lives and reduce the harm they cause to people around them and to society. "We have made important progress in recent years. There are now over 195,000 people accessing drug treatment every year, 130% more than in 1998." 30.10.07

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Drug success rate of 3% is nothing more than the natural rate of remission

Drug Treatment services in England have made little to no progress with 5,829 addicts leaving treatment drug-free last year. There are now over 195,000 people accessing drug treatment every year which equates to just a 3% success rate.

Paul Hayes of the NTA says “ the £400m the Government invested in drug treatment last year has to be judged against 195,000 individuals whose treatment has protected them from early death, reduced the criminality and provided opportunity to rebuild their lives. To judge treatment solely on the small numbers that finally leave the treatment system in a given year is misleading and dangerous to the drug users, their families and society”.

But critics argue Mr Hayes is missing the point, treatment is all about getting people off drugs and back into society and this figure of 3% is nothing more than the natural rate of remission, meaning that, at least 3% a year will quit using drugs because they have simply had enough and want to be drug free, with this in mind the actual success rate and the sum total of all spending on drug treatment services equals a 0% success rate, which is simply not good enough.

A source said "Newer and more effective forms of treatment are required than the ones presently used which are clearly not working and those in charge of providing treatment need to be held more accountable for their poor results". 2.11.07

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Are Government drug treatment programmes a waste of taxpayers' money?

Why are we asking this now?
Because new statistics suggest that while more money is being thrown at drug treatment programmes, the number of people leaving them free of their dependency on drugs has barely increased. According to figures from the National Treatment Agency (NTA), spending on drugs services reached £384m last year, up from £253m in 2004-05. In 2004, 5,759 people left drug treatment free from their addiction, compared with 5,829 in 2006, thats an extra 70 people for the extra £131m spent. The proportion of people who are completely drug-free after treatment is actually falling, down to a lowly 3 per cent. That has led some to suggest that the Government's current policy on treating those with drug addictions is flawed, and that public money is being mis-spent.

How has the Government reacted?
The Department of Health has defended its increased investment in drug treatment services by saying that the effects of the heightened spending have not been felt yet. It says that it can take as much as seven years for an addict to complete their treatment successfully, meaning that it is too early to make any judgements about the effects of the extra money.

It also points out that the number of drug users receiving treatment is at a record high, meaning that the Government's target on treatment has been achieved two years early. There are now more than 195,000 people accessing drug treatment, which is 130 per cent more than in 1998. Health minister, Dawn Primarolo, said that achievement was "remarkable". She said: "Many thought that the targets set in 1998 were aspirational and unrealistic. We have made massive strides in tackling the harm that drugs cause to both individuals and society as a whole. Through the drug strategy we will continue to ensure that effective drug treatment is available to those who need it."

Who should we believe?
It probably is too early to make any definite judgement on the Government's drug treatment strategy, as there are interesting statistics about the number of people now staying in their drug-treatment programmes. The NTA figures showed that the number of drug users completing early treatment or being retained on treatment increased from 76 per cent in 2005-06 to 80 per cent in 2006-07. This could be a sign that the increased investment is beginning to have an impact.

Does drug treatment serve any purpose?
For some, it is life-changing. There are more than 5,000 people each year who are given the opportunity of a drug-free life due to the drug-addiction programmes. The economy and society also benefit, as addicts can again become productive members of their community. But with the cost of getting each one off drugs reportedly reaching £1.85m over the past three years, questions are bound to be asked about whether it is worth the burden on the taxpayer.

Others argue that drug treatment should not just be measured by the number of people who leave it drug-free. "You cannot get heavy drug users off drugs over night," said the chair of the all-party Parliamentary Drugs Misuse Group, Labour MP, Brian Iddon. "A lot of drug treatment is about stabilising users, so they can function normally, get a job and sort themselves out. It is a complicated issue, but it is not all about abstinence."

Is the UK's drugs policy failing?
When seen in terms of the number of people now accessing drug treatment, there has been a vast improvement over the past decade. That suggests that drug addicts are much more aware of the help that is available to them. And anti-drugs messages might be having a greater effect more generally. According to the British Crime Survey, the number of people reporting to have used drugs in the past year is falling. Now, 8 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds say that they have taken a Class A drug, down from 8.6 per cent in 1998. And 24.1 per cent say that they have taken any illegal drug in the past 12 months, down from 31.8 per cent in 1998. But as the new figures have confirmed, trying to get people off drugs permanently is a lengthy and costly process – and one on which there does not seem to be much progress.

So what's going wrong?
Part of the problem is the nature of drug addiction itself. While it takes years to kick the habit, a relapse can happen in a second. For many drug users and former drug users, it is an on-going battle, rather than a clean break from their drug habit. According to some, too much attention has been paid to getting people into treatment, rather than focusing on the quality of treatment given to each patient. "The Government has gone for targets – on the quantity of people receiving treatment rather than the quality of treatment," said Brian Iddon. "We are now beginning to see the quality of treatments improve as well, including wider use of psychological treatments for cocaine addicts."

What are the policy alternatives?
Some say that a radical change is needed in the form of an end to the policy of prohibition. That is the opinion of drugs policy think-tank, Transform. It believes that drug prohibition itself is the prime cause of drug-related harm to both the individual users and society as a whole. It believes that proper government regulation would cut out criminal involvement in drugs, as well as decriminalising thousands of users.

"The Government has created a rod for its own back by over-hyping the usefulness of drug treatment," said Danny Kushlick, the director of Transform. "Becoming totally drug-free is only possible for a tiny minority of drug users of any type. Only around 5 per cent will be able to totally stop taking drugs.

"The reason that the Government gives so much money to the issue is because it wants to be seen to be tackling drug-related crime. If it really wants to tackle that, it needs to get rid of prohibition, which is the greatest cause of drug-related crime. Drug treatment should not be about making people drug-free. It should be about public health."

Will anything change?
Any movement away from the prohibition of drugs is unlikely, as it is an extremely politically sensitive issue. If anything, the Government is moving in the other direction. Gordon Brown has already said he is opposed to the legalisation of drugs, and has hinted he wants to reclassify cannabis.

Early next year, the Government will launch a new 10-year drug strategy, which could see a slight change in philosophy. It is already thought that a greater focus will be placed on getting people off drugs, rather than focusing on improving access to drug treatment services. 31.10.07

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Number of drug-addicted teens increases by a third in two years, figures show

The number of 16 and 17-year-olds being treated for drug addiction has soared by 30 per cent in two years. And cocaine is fast catching up with cannabis as the drug of choice for teenagers, figures out today show. There were 7,857 youngsters aged 16 and 17 on drug treatment programmes in England in 2007/08 - up from 6,058 the year before. Worryingly, there was also a significant increase in the number of under-16s receiving treatment, up 17 per cent to 6,840.

The statistics, released by the National Treatment Agency, showed that cannabis was still the most popular drug among the under-18s, with 12,865 of this age group treated for its misuse. However, there has also been a huge rise in the number treated for cocaine addiction. Some 861 were treated last year for cocaine, up 67 per cent. Cocaine has now overtaken heroin in the league of drugs, while small numbers were treated for crack, amphetamines and ecstasy.

The figures back up the findings of an international study by the World Health Organisation which showed that British children lead the Western world in both drug addiction and alcohol misuse.

LibDem health spokesman Norman Lamb said: 'The horror is that cocaine is fast becoming a fashionable drug of choice even for the under-18s. 'There is an unfortunate sense that because of the glitterati interest in cocaine, there is a real risk it is being seen as acceptable - More needs to be done to get across the fact that the health consequences are horrific.'

A spokesman for drug charity Addaction said: 'Cocaine is relatively cheap and easily available, so it is not surprising to us that more young people are in treatment for cocaine use.' The National Treatment Agency figures show that overall the number of people being treated is higher than ever. Across all ages in 2007/08, a record 202,666 were treated, a rise of 4 per cent on the previous year.

The agency was set up in 2001 to improve the availability and effectiveness of drug misuse treatment. But there are questions over whether the drug treatment programmes it promotes and funds are effective. The figures show that very few people of all ages entering treatment programmes in England left them cured of their addiction.

Only 11 per cent of the 69,612 discharged from treatment during the year left because they were drug-free, or just 3 per cent overall. This meant they had overcome their dependency on the drug they were treated for, were not using any other illegal drugs, and some were also meeting demands imposed on them not to use alcohol.

Mr Lamb said: 'The Government is losing the fight against drugs. There needs to be a National Audit Office investigation into the cost effectiveness of current treatment. 'The current record of failure is disastrous both for those in treatment and the wider community, who are placed at risk because of the close links between drug addiction and crime.'

Tory home affairs spokesman Dominic Grieve said the drug treatment budget had risen by £145million since 2004. But despite this, the proportion of addicts going clean had risen by only 5 per cent.

Mr Grieve said: 'This shows the Government's entire approach of simply trying to manage addiction is wrong. 'We would abandon Labour's failing policy and replace it with an abstinence-based approach. This will have the objective of actually getting people off drugs for good.' 3.10.08

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Millions of pounds 'wasted' on drug treatment, Tories claim

Millions of pounds have been wasted on Government-funded drugs programmes to get hardened addicts off drugs, the Tories claimed. New figures show that a record 202,000 people went through drug treatment programmes in England last year. But just 7,324 - four per cent - were released free of drugs.

This compares with 3,632 three years ago in 2004-05. Over the same period, the Government's drug Treatment Budget rose by 57 per cent to £145million. Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve, said that "the Government's entire approach of simply trying to manage addiction is wrong". He said: "Drugs wreck lives and destroy communities but these figures show that despite a significant increase in investment there has been a paltry increase in the number of addicts going clean. "This failing approach is compounded by Labour's mixed and confused messages on the dangers posed by cannabis and ecstasy. The fact the Government won't acknowledge this makes them part of the problem not the solution."

Paul Hayes, chief executive of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse, said his agency could do better. He said: "The treatment sector as a whole, and the NTA as an organisation, must again raise our game, ensuring our staff are skilled enough, our resources are allocated appropriately, and that we better communicate what we are doing to the public." Other statistics from the NTA also showed that more than 64,000 people remained in treatment for 12 weeks.

Mr Hayes added: "Most users do not want to be in treatment for the rest of their lives. They see treatment as a means to help them overcome addiction and gain control of their lives.

"The NTA's role is to help services to enable that process, and support users to leave treatment safely, free of dependency." But critics argue 'Mr Hayes and NTA have had long enough to make a difference but have failed, so sweeping changes need to be made'. 3.10.08

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The new 2008 drugs strategy explained

The problem
There are an estimated 332,000 problem drug users in England.
Class A drug uses costs the country £15.4bn a year in crime and health costs.
Between a third and a half of theft and burglary is estimated to be drug-related.
24% of people aged 16 to 24 have used an illegal drug in the past year.
10% of people aged 16 to 59 have used an illegal drug in the past year.
The UK illegal drug market is estimated to be worth between £4bn and £6.6bn a year.

Crime measures
Police to have the power to seize cash and assets belonging to suspected drug dealers on arrest, rather than on conviction. "Those who buy 'bling', plasma screens and other household goods, to avoid circulating cash, will have their assets seized before they have a chance to disperse them."

A greater range of goods will be subject to the asset recovery programme, which enables convicted drug dealers to have their assets seized. The 12-year time limit governing asset recovery will also be abandoned. Asset seizure agreements to be negotiated with other countries, starting with the United Arab Emirates in April 2008, "so dealers can't channel proceeds abroad".

Antisocial behaviour orders to be imposed on drug dealers after conviction. These could ban them from entering certain areas, or engaging in certain behaviour linked to drug dealing. Further drug screening at airports. Police to be encouraged to make greater use of the powers they have to close crack houses. Wider use of drug intervention programmes, which involves offenders having to take treatment programmes.

Benefit measures
Drug users to be threatened with benefit cuts if they do not participate in drug treatment programmes. "We do not think it is right for the taxpayer to help sustain drug habits when individuals could be getting treatment to overcome barriers to employment." Increasing support available to drug users to help them get housing and work. Trial projects to "explore the potential of a more flexible use of funding to address individual needs".

Drug treatment services
Programmes involving prescription of injectable heroin and methadone to addicts who do not respond to other forms of treatment to be rolled out, "subject to the findings, due in 2009, of pilots exploring the use of this type of treatment". "New and innovative treatment approaches" to be investigated. Programmes using "positive reinforcement techniques" to be piloted. Addicts to be encouraged to make wider use of mutual aid support networks. Prison drug treatment programmes to be improved.

Support for families
Family members such as grandparents who take on caring responsibilities in the place of drug-using parents to get additional support through a programme in which councils can pay those caring for children classified as "in need". More support for parents with drug problems so that children do not fall into "excessive or inappropriate caring roles". More family-based treatment services to protect young people.

Drugs education
Improved information and guidance to be available to all parents. Schools and colleges to be encouraged to see what they can do to identify and support. Further action to be taken to reduce underage sales of alcohol and cigarettes. 27.2.08

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Drug treatment 08 - success or failure?

Drug treatment officials were busy rubbishing my journalism yesterday afternoon, telling anyone who would listen that the man from the BBC had got his figures wrong. I wouldn't burden you with details of the statistical spat, except I think the episode goes to the heart of the debate over what England's half a billion pounds a year drug treatment programme is for.

The National Treatment Agency (NTA) yesterday published its annual figures showing yet another big increase in the numbers of people who were on the drug treatment programme last year - 202,000 altogether. (Trebles all round - government target achieved in style.) Not mentioned in the press notice, discretely lodged in a table near the bottom of the data release, was the number of people who left the treatment programme drug-free last year - 7,324

What I did, and what so infuriated the people at the NTA, was to compare the two. The arithmetic was pretty simple. Just 3.6% of those in treatment were discharged free of illegal drugs.

They didn't like that - not one bit. An email was sent out from the press office steering other journalists away from doing the same sum. "Just in case anyone is tempted to follow the BBC 's 3.6% figure", warned Director of Communications Jon Hibbs, "we think this is a misleading way to interpret the data: it's like measuring a school's GCSE success by counting the number of A grades as proportion of the total school population".

The NTA prefer to focus on the number in treatment and the number retained for 12 weeks - the government's measures of success, strangely, there is no target for getting people off drugs.

If pressed, they will argue that the data shows that those who left drug-free represent 11% of those who were discharged from treatment. That looks a bit better. But do you see what they've done? They have ignored the tens of thousands of people who are in drug treatment but were not discharged. People like Andrew Walters who I met in Sunderland this week who has spent ten years on methadone for his heroin addiction.

Andrew is supposedly part of the drug treatment success story. He has appeared in the statistics for a decade but he says no-one seems interested in trying to get him clean. "It's like everyone's give up on you", he tells me. Andrew pleaded to be allowed to get into residential rehab, but each time he was turned down. "On five separate occasions I asked them. Five times. I just got put to one side." Methadone may have helped him untangle some of the chaos in his life, but in his view it has got him no nearer getting off drugs. He's just been parked. "They like giving methadone out", he says. "If you ask to top up your methadone they'll put it up without any questions." But he doesn't want to be on methadone - a "vile drug" he calls it. It has rotted his teeth and ruled his daily routine. "I was just topping off with heroin", he admits.

When I first pointed out the very small proportion of users who left England's treatment programme drug free on the BBC Today programme last year, in the words of one academic in the field, it set off a small nuclear explosion in the drugs world. The system had been patting itself on the back for getting lots of people signed up for treatment but people had not noticed what happened afterwards. The focus was on inputs not outcomes.

A debate many had thought won and lost a decade ago was reopened. Should the aim of drug treatment be to reduce harm or get people off drugs?

The harm reductionists had long ruled the roost with a philosophy of helping people who misuse drugs get their lives straight so crime and health risks were reduced. It is a worthy aim but some in the drugs field believed the system needed to be more ambitious. In a report sent to drug teams this week, the NTA itself bemoans the way that residential services are too often used "as a last resort rather than as a concerted attempt to achieve long-term abstinence earlier in a drug-using career." "This has led to unsatisfactory outcomes for all involved", it notes.

It was more than 'unsatisfactory'; it was very nearly fatal for Andrew who attempted suicide after being turned down for rehab. "The only reason they found me was my room in the bedsit place was above the office and they heard me hit the floor" he tells me. "They come in and I still had the needle in my body."

If you look at the figures published yesterday you see that last year 79,619 people were in treatment for the whole year. One of those was Andrew. The vast majority will be heroin addicts who are on prescriptions for methadone or another substitute. They may be in treatment for a long time to come. With present treatments, it is not easy to get someone off drugs. It can take years and there may well be many false dawns on the way. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

Professor David Best, an internationally renowned expert on drugs, is about to publish new research into what helped a cohort of ex-addicts get clean. "The only type of formal treatment service that was often cited as being among 'the key things that finally helped you to become abstinent' was residential rehabilitation", he reports.

Professor Best goes on to criticise the lack of ambition in the system. "The experiences of this population are at odds with the 'chronic, relapsing condition' mantra which pervades UK drug services", he writes.

The latest figures show that 147,000 of the individuals in treatment were being given prescribed medication - 74% of all those on the programme. How many accessed residential rehab? The data shows it was less than 5,000 - around 2% of the treatment population. So I make no apology for comparing the total number of people in treatment with the number who leave the system drug free. To do otherwise would be to ignore the plight of those, like Andrew, who want to get clean but are not given the help. 3.10.08

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Rise in drug use sees more than 1,200 children hospitalised last year

Britain's 'bleak' drugs problem has been revealed as it emerged that more than 1,200 children have been hospitalised for taking illegal substances in the last year. The figure is an almost 45 per cent increase on a decade ago, leading to accusations that Labour had failed to tackle the country's drug problem.

More than three million adults are estimated to have taken banned substances last year and one in three British adults now admits that they have taken illegal drugs at some point in their lifetime. The percentage of young people taking cocaine has also soared to record levels.

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said: "Labour should not underestimate how bleak a picture these figures paint. "As drugs get stronger, the harm they are doing to young peoples' mental health is increasing. The Government needs to wake up to the scale of the problem we face on drug misuse." But ministers highlighted that the record numbers of people in treatment for addiction and said the number of drug-related deaths had fallen.

The figures, released by the NHS Information Centre, also revealed the number of teenagers needing hospital treatment because of drugs rose last year by more than 10 per cent to nearly 10,000. The number of under-16s hospitalised because of drugs last year was 1,241, up from 868 in 1996-97 while the number of 16 to 24-year-olds receiving hospital treatment increased from 8,508 to 9,657.

More than six per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds admitted that they had used cocaine over the previous year, while 11 per cent admitted that they had used cocaine at some point in their lives. Among 15-year-old boys 42 per cent admit having taken illegal drugs - including 32 per cent in the past year

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: 'This is a shocking indictment of Labour's failure to tackle the scourge of drugs. They allow drugs to flow in through our porous borders, tie our police up in red tape and then only seek to manage people's addiction as opposed to ending it.'

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "The high-quality drug treatment that is being provided is the most effective way of reducing illegal drug misuse, improving the physical and mental health of drug users, as well as reducing the harm they cause to themselves and society." 15.8.08

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Number of children hospitalised for taking illegal drugs rises 50% under Labour

The number of children admitted to hospital with drug-related mental problems has soared by nearly half in the past decade, disturbing new figures show. The admissions for drug-affected children rose by 48 per cent between 1996/7 and 2006/7, surging from 272 to 402.

The rise was well ahead of a simultaneous 17 per cent increase in admissions of people aged 16 to 24 suffering from behavioural problems linked to illegal drug use. In 1996/7, hospitals saw 5,964 youngsters in that age group but in 2006/7 they admitted 6,983. In all the number of children and young people admitted to hospital with such problems has risen by around a fifth - 18 per cent, from 6,236 to 7,385, the NHS data shows.

The figures for 25- to 34-year-olds were perhaps even more shocking - nearly doubling over the decade, from 8,229 admissions to 15,330.

The data covers NHS hospital admissions in England where the main or secondary diagnosis was drug-related mental health and behavioural disorder. The same round-up of NHS statistics shows that among 16- to 24-year-olds, the proportion who admitted using cocaine in the previous year topped six per cent - well over one in 20 - for the first time. The proportion who admitted using cocaine at any stage in their lives rose above 11 per cent for the first time. Cannabis use fell, but was still admitted by 21 per cent - more than one in five.

There are marked variations between the sexes, however, with men (4,715) more than twice as likely as women (2,019) to be admitted to hospital for drug-related mental problems in 2006/7. During the same period, 5,491 men and 4,554 women were admitted with drug poisoning - for a total some 30 per cent higher than the overall figure for 1996/7.

Today's report also showed that men accounted for 79 per cent of the 1,573 deaths from illicit drug use in 2006. In 2006/07, 13.2 per cent of men also reported taking drugs during the last year, compared with 6.9 per cent of women.

NHS Information Centre chief executive, Tim Straughan, said: 'This bulletin paints a picture of wide discrepancy between the number of men who take, are treated, or even die from drug use compared to the number of women. 'The fact more than 1,500 people died due to drug use in 2006 is extremely saddening in itself, but the fact so many of these deaths are male raises many questions about gender and drug misuse.'

Surprisingly, hospital admissions where the primary diagnosis was a drug-related mental health disorder fell slightly during the ten-year period, from 7,584 to 6,743. But admissions where the secondary diagnosis was drug-related pushed the overall figures up from 19,018 to 38,170.

The North-East SHA (strategic health authority) handled the highest proportion of admissions for drug poisoning - 38 people for every 100,000 admitted. It was followed by North West SHA, with 32 per 100,000.

The number of people listed as in drug treatment more than doubled over the ten years, from 85,000 to 195,464, according to the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System but critics argue 'their treatments aren't working'. 14.8.08

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Police losing fight against drugs trade despite billions spent

Police and customs are fighting a losing battle against the illegal drugs trade despite billions of pounds being spent every year on fighting it, according to a new report. The price of cocaine has halved in some areas since 2000 while heroin has fallen in price by 35 pc and the "extremely resilient" drugs industry is now worth 41 per cent of the legal alcohol market, it says. A crackdown that has seen seizures of class A drugs more than double since 2006 to nearly 40,000 has had little impact on the supply of or demand for drugs.

An estimated 60 to 80 pc of all drugs would need to be regularly removed from the streets in order to put major traffickers out of business, the report by the UK Drug Policy Commission warns. Seizure rates on this scale have never been achieved in Britain, with an estimated 12 pc of heroin and 9 pc of cocaine in Britain being impounded between 1996 and 2005, or anywhere else. Last year 1.5 tonnes of heroin and 4.4m ectsasy tablets were sezied by the Serious Organised Crime Agency, according to the report.

But each year 20 tonnes of heroin, 18 tonnes of cocaine and 16 tonnes of crack change hands on the British drugs market, while 412 tonnes of cannabis and 60 million ecstasy tablets are thought to be bought and sold. The Commission suggests that traditional crime-fighting tactics are simply not working and that the £5.3bn British drugs market is "too fluid" for law enforcement agencies to deal with.

It also claims that even high-profile swoops on "drugs factories" and significant convictions of leading dealers usually fail to have a noticeable impact on supply, due to the industry's ability to adapt quickly to disruption. Dealers simply reduce purity to maintain their profit margins, the report says.

In 2005/06, the Government spent £380m just on reducing supply in England, the report says, while the annual cost to the criminal justice system of dealing with Class A drug alone is thought to be more than £4 billion. Tim McSweeney, one of the authors of the report, said: "We were struck by just how little evidence there is to show that the hundreds of millions of pounds spent on UK enforcement each year has made a sustainable impact and represents value for money."

The report calls for more resources to be devoted to reducing the "collateral damage" of drugs on communities, by tackling gang violence and prostitution. Its authors say this would have a greater impact on the drugs trade than traditional hauls. David Blakey CBE QPM, from the UK Drug Policy Commission, said: "All enforcement agencies aim to reduce drug harms and most have formed local partnerships to do this, but they still tend to be judged by measures of traditional supply-side activity such as seizure rates.

"This is a pity as it is very difficult to show that increasing drug seizures actually leads to less drug-related harm. Of course, drug dealers must be brought to justice, but we should recognise and encourage the wider role that the police and other law enforcement officials can play in reducing the impact of drug markets on our communities."

Responding to the report, a Home Office spokesman said that seizures were only part of the Government's approach to fighting drug crime. He said: "Many of the report's recommendations are already being implemented. Our drugs strategy encompasses enforcement, prevention, education and treatment." He added that "intervention" programmes were seeing 1,000 offenders each week move into drug treatment. 30.7.08

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Cocaine and Ecstasy deaths up 1,200% since records began in 1993

Death from 'middle class' drugs glamorised by celebrities are at their highest level since records began, government figures revealed today. Party drugs Ecstasy and cocaine now claim nearly 300 lives a year, an increase of over 1,200 per cent since figures were first recorded in 1993. The statistics, released by the Office for National Statistics, also reveal that far more men than women are dying from drug abuse and are taking them later in life, often into their 40s.

Experts believe that cocaine's 'dinner party' image is masking its true dangers. The high number of cocaine deaths are thought to be the result of mixing the drug with alcohol which produces a potentially-deadly compound called cocaine-ethynyl. There have been a number of high-profile deaths involving the drug in recent years.

Actress Natasha Collins, 31, died in a scalding hot bath in January after taking large amounts of cocaine, wine, vodka and sleeping tablets.  Flamboyant German aristocrat Count Gottfried von Bismarck died last July after injecting cocaine every hour during the day and night before his death. Yesterday drug charities warned of an 'epidemic' of recreational drug deaths as young Britons emulate stars such as Kate Moss, Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse.

Clare McNeil, of drug treatment charity Addaction, said: 'Cocaine is seen as a middle-class drug associated with success and money. 'People think they can copy celebrities and do a quick line because it doesn't have the same stigma as other class As but it's actually just as destructive. 'People are often ignorant of the risks of combining alcohol with cocaine for example, which can increase the risk of liver and heart disease, strokes and epilepsy.

'The increase in deaths among men in their 30s and 40s is worrying. It suggests that more people are continuing to experiment with drugs well into adulthood. 'At one time young people would dabble then stop as they settled down but these kind of figures suggest an epidemic." 

Deaths from all drugs rose by 2.7 per cent last year - the highest figure since 2002. The figures show the total number of deaths in England and Wales from drugs poisoning in 2007 was 2,640, up 2.7 per cent from the 2,570 in 2006. The majority of those were male - 1,914 last year compared with 1,782 in 2006.

Meanwhile, female drug poisoning deaths fell by eight per cent from 788 deaths in 2006 to 726 in 2007. Cocaine claimed 196 lives in 2007 and Ecstasy 97, a combined total of 293. This is a staggering 1,274 per cent increase since 1993, when just 23 people died after taking the drugs.

The highest number of drug deaths were among men aged between 30 and 39. Deaths among 20 to 29-year-olds, which was previously the highest group, continued to increase but at a slower rate. David Gilbert, chief executive of drugs charity D.A.R.E., called on families to become more involved in the war on drugs.

He said: 'Parents need to play a much bigger role in setting children on the straight and narrow when they are young. 'Childhood is when views of drugs are formed and it is the best time to educate people to avoid them. 'We obviously have a massive problem and the different agencies and charities need to pull together to tackle it.'  Class A drugs heroin and morphine caused 829 deaths in 2007, compared with 713 in 2006.

Methadone deaths also shot to their highest levels since 1999 with 326 deaths - an increase of 35 per cent compared with 2006. Party towns Blackpool and Brighton top the list of black spots for drug deaths hitting 233 a year.

Blackpool topped the list with 120 people in every 100,000 being killed every year between 2000 and 2006. The seaside town was closely followed by Brighton and Hove with 112 deaths and Camden, in London, with 83. Deaths involving antidepressants, paracetamol and aspirin were all at their lowest levels since records began in 1993. 29.8.08

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Warning cocaine will be bigger problem than heroin

COCAINE will soon become a bigger problem than heroin in Edinburgh , according to Edinburgh 's outgoing drugs and alcohol tsar. Tom Wood said the falling cost of the drug – now around the price of a glass of wine – means it is no longer the preserve of professionals, but is already being used together with heroin in some parts of Edinburgh. He said this would lead to the same antisocial problems associated with heroin, such as crime and prostitution.

Mr Wood is handing over to the council's director of health and social care, Peter Gabbitas, at the end of the month. He told councillors: "In this city, we are living with the legacy of heavy heroin use in the 1980s.

"Drug-taking and heavy alcohol use is normal in many parts of society in our city. We are not at the top of the bell curve yet, and there will be a huge increase in child protection referrals and drug deaths for the next five or six years. It's a long road ahead.

"Cocaine is here, and in some parts of the city it is already a bigger problem than heroin. In five years time, it will be the major problem in Edinburgh and east Scotland . It won't be restricted to the wine bars – it will permeate throughout and it is really difficult to treat."

Mr Wood said a heavy cocaine habit is just as addictive as heroin. But he also said that a "reality check" is needed, because the level of heavy alcohol abuse is 20 times higher than drug use. 14.5.08

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Cocaine overdose hospital admissions rise 400 per cent in just four years

The number of drug users being admitted to hospital with cocaine overdoses is four times higher than it was eight years ago, new figures reveal. Just 161 people were admitted to hospital in England for cocaine-related emergencies in 1999. But 740 users needed treatment in 2007, most of them men and with an average age of 29 years, according to the magazine Druglink.

Among hospitals that have seen a huge rise in cocaine poisonings is St Thomas's Hospital in Lambeth, South London. It dealt with 138 cocaine-related cases between April 2006 and March 2007. In the second half of last year alone, the hospital treated 121 patients in its Accident and Emergency department in connection with cocaine use. Drug use in the UK is at an 11-year low but cocaine abuse has been on the increase since 1998.

While use of most drugs has remained stable, the proportion of adults who admitted using cocaine has risen from 1.2 per cent ten years ago to 2.6 per cent last year. Campaigners said last night that celebrity figures such as Amy Winehouse made the drug look 'cool' among wealthy young professionals but the health dangers include heart attacks and strokes. Almost 200 Britons a year are killed by the class A drug.

Models Nina Campbell and Kate Moss, along with former Eastenders actress Danniella Westbrook - who had to have her nose rebuilt - are among those who have been treated for addiction. A survey found one in three young men attending A&E at a London hospital with suspected heart attacks were cocaine users. However, experts believe it causes more deaths than appear in official statistics because it may not be acknowledged as being involved in a heart attack or a stroke.

Druglink editor Max Daly said 'Cocaine use constricts blood vessels and can result in a rise in body temperature, burst blood vessels and, in extreme cases, death from brain seizures, heart failure and respiratory problems.' Tony D'Agostino, a leading expert on cocaine use, said 'This provides yet another warning to the government that it must spend money on an awareness campaign and on special health services if it is serious about tackling the dangers of cocaine use.'

As cocaine poisonings have risen, cannabis poisonings dipped from 171 in 1999 to 96 last year and heroin overdoses also slumped from 1,962 in 1999 to 1,530 in 2007. Mary Brett, spokesman for Europe Against Drugs, said celebrity users of cocaine sent out the wrong message. She said 'We were supposed to see cocaine use being targeted as a class A drug, instead it's going through the roof.

'Young people think it's cool to use cocaine, that it's a safe recreational drug but it can have dramatic effects on the body and cause psychosis. We need more health campaigns and some way of getting the message through that celebrities are not role models, they can afford the rehab unlike some of those who get addicted.' Norman Lamb MP, Lib Dem shadow health secretary, said 'These  figures highlight an epidemic in hard drug use, which will  have grave consequences for the NHS.

'Years of casual celebrity endorsement has led to cocaine being seen as a fun thing to do on a Saturday night when in reality it puts users at severe  risk of overdose, which can lead to death. 'A and E wards are having to cope with the increasing strain and are not able to offer the immediate support services which many hard drug users need.' 16.7.08

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Current drug policy has 'limited impact'

The UK has an unusually severe drugs problem and the government's strategy has had a very limited impact on drug use, a new watchdog body has been told. The report for the independent UK Drug Policy Commission said more addicts were being treated. But it added that the benefits were limited, and there was little evidence education schemes had had an impact.

The Home Office insisted the strategy was working - with a 16% decline in drug use since 1998. BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw said the report was part of the debate about the government's 10-year drug strategy, which is due to be updated next year. Attempts to restrict the availability of drugs by arresting dealers and seizing supplies were failing and drugs prices on the street were falling, the report argued. And the benefits of drugs treatment programmes were limited because some users relapsed and many went untreated, it added.

The UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC) - chaired by Dame Ruth Runciman - has been set up to analyse drug policy in the country and is being funded with a three-year grant from a charity, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. Twelve experts have been recruited from the drug treatment and medical research sectors, as well as some from policing, public policy research and the media. They include homeless charity Shelter's chief executive Adam Sampson and the head of the Medical Research Council, Professor Colin Blakemore.

The report says that as well as having the highest level of problem drug use in Europe, the UK has the second highest number of drug-related deaths. The study found about a quarter of people in the 26-to-30 age group had tried a Class A drug on at least one occasion.

The value of the illegal drugs market in the UK is put at £5bn a year, and the cost of drug-related crime in England and Wales is estimated at more than £13bn. About one in five people arrested is a heroin addict, the report adds. Drug addiction rates in the UK are double those in France, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.

There has been a 111% rise in the number of people jailed for all drug-related offences between 1994 and 2005. However, street prices have dropped - with heroin falling from £70 a gram in 2000 to £54 in 2005. The report said: "Tougher enforcement should theoretically make illegal drugs more expensive and harder to get.

"The prices of the principal drugs in Britain have declined for most of the last 10 years and there is no indication that tougher enforcement has succeeded in making drugs less accessible." But the report's authors, Professor Peter Reuter and Dr Alex Stevens, say policies are succeeding in tackling certain illnesses and some aspects of criminal behaviour linked to drug use.

Dame Ruth said: "The commission does not start from the position that all UK drug policy has failed, but rather that we do not know enough about which elements of policy work, why they work and where they work well." The debate on drugs was often "sensationalised and polarised", she added. 18.4.07

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UK drug crime strategy criticised

The government strategy for cutting drug-related crime has been severely criticised in a report by the influential UK Drug Policy Commission. The independent panel said evidence to show what worked in drug treatment was "seriously weak or absent". More than £330m is spent in England and Wales on treating offenders annually.

The panel said some treatment services risked doing more harm than good. It criticised the Carat service, which took on 78,000 new prisoners last year. In a report seen by BBC home editor Mark Easton, the commission said the treatment service cost £31m to run but "there are no evaluations of its effectiveness".

It found for the 40,000 prisoners who go through detox while in jail, a lack of proper aftercare meant many went straight back to using hard drugs when they left prison. And that one in 200 injecting heroin users would be dead from an overdose within a fortnight of being released.

There was also a lack of evidence for the effectiveness of drug-free wings in prisons, it said. "Given the considerable ongoing investment in criminal justice system drug interventions, it is striking that we still know so little about the effectiveness of many of them, especially those in prisons and crucially whether they represent value for money", it added.

While community programmes appeared to work better, they were no magic bullet. In February, the government launched its 10-year drugs strategy, which saw more money focused on drug-dependent offenders. But the commission said: "We simply do not know enough about which programmes work best for whom. "Answers to even basic questions are not freely available and the weakness of the evidence base severely hampers good practice."

The report was highly critical of the quality of treatment in jails, where "provision often falls short of even minimum standards... a major concern for the health and well-being of prisoners and the subsequent impact on crime". But the government said there was a growing body of evidence treating offenders could reduce drug-related crime. Its new drugs strategy made "proactively targeting and managing drug-misusing offenders" a key element.

An additional £25m a year will be spent on treating offenders by 2011. Justice Minister David Hanson welcomed the commission's report. He said it recognised the challenges, difficulties and recent improvements in drug treatment. He said 53 prisons would benefit from health funding for enhanced clinical drug services by April.

The £175m Drugs Intervention Programme treated 40,000 offenders in the community last year. Six months later, 47% had reduced their offending. But 28% had increased. The report said plans to widen treatment to drug users whose habit was not directly related to their offending was "likely to be inefficient and could be harmful".

The risk was that younger recreational drug users would fail to complete some treatment programme and would end up being further criminalised. The law of diminishing returns could kick in, making the scheme less effective and more expensive, it warned. Chairman of the British Medical Association's forensic medicine committee, George Fernie, said the prison system lacked a "comprehensive care package" from when someone entered the custodial chain to when they were released.

"Technically, it is not that difficult to get somebody off drugs," he said. "It is the follow-through that we have to have, with stable housing, employment and family support." He backed community treatment, saying: "Prisons are perhaps not awash with drugs, but illegal substances are readily available. "We would like people treated effectively in the community if the alternative is a short prison sentence." 17.3.08

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Anti-Depressants taken by thousands of Brits 'do NOT work', major new study reveals

Anti-depressant tablets taken by millions of Britons may be a waste of time and money, research shows. An analysis of dozens of studies involving thousands of patients revealed that some of the most widely-prescribed anti-depressants work little better than dummy pills. The drugs studied - including Prozac, Seroxat and Efexor - were little more effective than placebos in improving the mental health in the majority of cases, the University of Hull research showed.

Only in the most extreme depression did the tablets, which are taken by around two million Britons and have been linked to a host of sideeffects including suicide, prove substantially superior in improving mental health.

Dr Tim Kendall, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, described the results as "fantastically important". He added that one of the study's strengths lay in the inclusion of data which drug companies had chosen not to publicise - perhaps because it was less favourable than they would like. The study, published in the respected journal PLoS Medicine, suggests hundreds of thousands of Britons are needlessly taking powerful - and potentially dangerous - drugs.

As well as suicide and suicidal thoughts, side-effects associated with the drugs studied and other SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) anti-depressants range from self harm to anxiety, insomnia, nausea, headaches and vomiting. Seroxat alone has been linked to at least 50 suicides - both adult and child - in the UK since 1990.

The research comes as prescriptionsfor anti-depressants are at record levels, with 31million written in 2006 at a cost to the NHS of almost £300million. Around half of these were for Prozac, Seroxat, Efexor and other SSRIs. Research which showed the most widely prescribed anti-depressant pills are ineffective was gathered by combining the results of 35 clinical trials involving 5,000 patients

Researcher Professor Irving Kirsch said: "Given these data, there seems little evidence to support the prescription of anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments have failed to provide benefit." Professor Kirsch, a psychologist, reached his conclusion after combining the results of 35 clinical trials involving more than 5,000 patients with depression. The data on Prozac, Seroxat, Efexor and a fourth drug not used in the UK had been submitted to the U.S. drug watchdog ahead of the antidepressants being licensed for sale.

Two-thirds of those taking part in the studies were prescribed the SSRIs, while the remainder took placebo tablets. Comparison of the two groups showed that in the majority of cases the mental health of those taking anti-depressants improved little more than those on dummy pills. Only those who were extremely depressed - a very small proportion of those studied - fared substantially better when on medication.

The results suggest that those taking the tablets mainly benefit from the "placebo effect" - in which symptoms are eased not by medication but by relief in diagnosis and the simple expectation a treatment will work. Professor Kirsch emphasised that patients should not change their treatment without speaking to their doctor, but said other approaches include physical exercise, psychoanalysis and self-help books.

Richard Ley, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, the drug industry's trade body, said all medicines have to be proven to be more effective than a placebo before they are put on sale. A spokesman for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which draws up guidelines on the treatment of illnesses, said routine use of anti-depressants is not recommended for mild depression. He added that Professor Kirsch's results would be taken into consideration when the existing guidelines are reviewed later this year.

Hailed as a miracle cure for depression when they were first prescribed in the late 1980s, the "happy pills" known as SSRIs work by keeping the moodboosting chemical serotonin in the brain for longer. Kate Charles spent seven years on anti-depressant drugs after suffering severe depression as a teenager. It was only when she took up running that she was able to stop taking the pills after finding that exercise was better at lifting her mood.

Speaking about her experiences three years ago, the 35-year-old writer from Dorset, said: "I have always felt quite low but my depression really hit when I was a teenager. "By the time I was 15, my GP was prescribing betablockers to relax my nerve impulses, slow my heartbeat down and make me feel calmer. Then, before my A-levels, I was put on anti-depressants. "In my final year at Sussex University, my GP moved me on to Prozac, which was the wonder drug at the time.

"Although it improved the depression, I felt detached and numb. I had other terrible side-effects -painful, aching joints, sleeplessness and anxiety. "Somehow, I managed to get a job in a finance company and struggled on but Prozac was my constant companion." Things changed when she set herself the challenge of training for a marathon.

She said: "Running was so much more effective at lifting my mood than Prozac that I consulted the doctor and spent eight months weaning myself off the drugs. "The withdrawal was painful but I was determined. I have no doubt that running took me out of my depression." 26.2.08

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More than 200 heroin addict prisoners forced to go 'cold turkey' win £4,000 damages each for human rights breach

MPs condemned the Government after it was revealed that nearly 200 prisoners received £3,807 each in compensation - because they were forced to give up heroin in jail. The convicted criminals claimed their human rights were infringed when they were deprived of the heroin substitute methadone and had to go "cold turkey".

A High Court test case involving six prisoners was given the go-ahead but the Government agreed to settle out of court and pay £750,000 to 197 inmates. When lawyers' fees are taken into consideration, the total cost to the taxpayer is well over £1million. The payouts were branded "disgusting" today as full details of the settlement emerged for the first time.

Andrew Rosindell, Tory MP for Romford, said: "This is astonishing. It's an outrageous waste of public money. "You go to prison to receive punishment and drug addicts are supposed to be taken off drugs."

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance , said: "It's disgusting that law-abiding taxpayers are being forced to pay money to these drug-addled criminals. "If you are in jail of course you should be forced to be clean. The prison system is failing precisely because meddling bureaucrats and foolish legislation stops prison guards doing their job." The former heroin addicts claimed the cash from prisons around the country.

The prisoners had all been using methadone - paid for the the Government - to combat their addictions. They claimed their human rights were breached when this approach was ditched in favour of a cold turkey detox. The group claimed breaches under Articles 3 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights - which ban discrimination, torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment - and Article 8, which enshrines the right to respect for private life. They also claimed they were the victims of trespass in the form of unwanted treatment and accused the Prison Service of "clinical negligence".

A test case involving six of the 197 prisoners was given the go-ahead after a preliminary hearing at the High Court in May 2006. The prisoner's barrister Richard Hermer, a human rights lawyer specialising in group actions against the Government, told the court: "Many of the prisoners were receiving methadone treatment before they entered prison and were upset at the short period of treatment using opiates they encountered in jail.

"Imposing the short, sharp detoxification is the issue." Inmates claimed their drug treatment was "handled inappropriately" so they suffered "injuries and had difficulties with their withdrawal". The full month-long hearing was due to take place in November 2006 but the Government settled out of court shortly before it was due to begin.

The money was then paid out through a set up called the "opiate dependent prisoner litigation scheme". Among those to receive payouts are six inmates at HMP Altcourse in Fazakerley, near Liverpool , seven at Blakenhurst, near Redditch , Worcestershire, nine at Exeter , Devon , and 11 in Hull .

A Prison Service spokeswoman yesterday said the payments made were a minority of the claims made against the Government by lags but refused to give out details. She said: "We successfully defend the majority of contested claims. "We make payments only when we are instructed to do so by the courts or where strong legal advice suggests that a settlement will save public money.

"Each compensation claim received by the Prison Service is treated on its individual merits. "Legal advice is sought and, on the basis of that advice, a decision is made on whether or not the claim should be defended. "We cannot therefore comment on individual cases or the reasons that they were settled, as the terms of each settlement vary and may be subject to confidentiality clauses."

There are legal precedents to the settlement. In 2004, Lord Bonomy awarded armed robber Robert Napier awarded £2,400 for enduring the same treatment at Barlinnie prison in Glasgow. During the same year, gunman George Knights, 46, given nine life sentences for shooting three police officers, repeatedly sought compensation after being refused extra luxuries for his cell.

The Government has paid out £9million in compensation to convicted offenders for a huge range of claims over the last few years. Pay-outs were made for incidents including assaults by fellow lags, medical negligence and even sporting injuries while exercising in jail. 15.4.08

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Crystal meth could become middle Britain's crack cocaine within four years

Crystal meth could become a problem on the same scale as crack cocaine within the next four years, according to a new police report. The investigation carried out by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has predicted the drug has grown in popularity and could become a major problem. Use of the drug, which is a form of crystallised amphetamine, has reached epidemic levels in parts of America and Australia.

The report compares UK growth and patterns of use to that in each of these countries. ACPO expert on the drug, Detective Sergeant Andy Waite, told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 "in the last two or three years" police had seen "a gradual rise in the reporting of the use and manufacturing of the drug" in the UK. He also warned UK production of the drug is "something we are alarmed about" and is being monitored by police but pointed out the problem is "still relatively minor" in this country.

Regarded as a class A drug since January 2007, crystal meth is highly addictive and can cause paranoia, kidney failure and internal bleeding. It also ages the skin and rots gums. If prosecuted, users can face up to seven years in jail. Also known as Tina and Ice, meth can be snorted, smoked, eaten or melted and injected depending on whether it is bought as a powder or crystal "rocks".

The price varies from region to region but half a gram costs approximately £25 on the street. Dr Rebecca McKetin, from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), in Australia, said to the BBC: "People are thinking, 'it's OK to go out and smoke it with my friends on a Friday night when I go to the club'. But it kind of creeps up on them and quite a lot of those people are starting to experience problems with their methamphetamine use. "And I think people here are starting to learn that this is not typical of a recreational kind of drug. It is actually a very addictive and potentially very dangerous drug." This is not the first time fears of the drug's growth have been voiced. In January 2007, a barrister based in a prosperous East Anglian town told the Mail: "Crystal meth? I've seen more addicts through the courts here in the past few months than heroin users. This time last year, I had never heard of the stuff. Now suddenly it's taking over." A detective who was part of a team that exposed an Isle of Wight factory producing the drug last year also highlighted how destructive it can be. He said: "It has had devastating effects on rural communities and can completely wipe people out because it is extremely addictive - ten times more than other amphetamines - and only six per cent of those who take the drug ever manage to come off it."

Meth makeover: US mugshots show the physical effects the drug can have.

Last month, a man was jailed for four years for causing a car crash while high on crystal meth that left a mother and daughter needing leg amputations. Alberto Ramos, 32, snorted a gram of the drug the night before the crash, and then drove home the following day through London rush hour traffic. He lost control of the vehicle on Regents Street and Victoria Reeve and daughter Kayleigh were on the pavement when the car hit them. On a shopping trip to celebrate the latter's 21st birthday, Mrs Reeve saw her foot being wrenched from her leg as she was hit by the car and lying 3ft away. Her daughter could not remember the crash.

Sentencing him, Judge Rivlin warned of the dangers of crystal meth - which at the time of the incident had just been reclassified from a Class B to a Class A drug. He said: "This drug is similar to amphetamines, but the effects are much stronger. "It is a potent, dangerous stimulant which causes drivers to drift off the road and out of their lane. It also causes excessive sleeping and depressive symptoms." 15.2.08

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Britain's first drug 'shooting galleries' hailed a success

A trial scheme which set up "shooting galleries" in three cities, enabling heroin users to obtain drugs and inject them under supervision, has dramatically cut crime rates and stopped addicts buying their supplies on the streets. Yesterday's preliminary results from the £2.5m pilot project sent a ripple of excitement through the treatment community, because long-term heroin users are among the hardest addicts to treat. They lead chaotic lives, often robbing and stealing to fund their habits. According to official figures, 10 per cent of drug addicts commit 75 per cent of the acquisitive crimes in the Britain.

But the number of offences committed by the heroin addicts taking part in the shooting gallery scheme fell from an average of 40 each per month before they were admitted to "about half a dozen a month" after six months of intensive therapy, according to Professor John Strang, the head of the National Addiction Centre at the Maudsley Hospital, who is leading the study.

Instead of buying street heroin every day, the 150 volunteers are now buying it only four or five times a month on avera