drug misuse

Prescribing heroin: what is the evidence?

The first comprehensive overview of how and why heroin is prescribed in the UK. Prescribing heroin is the first overview of how and why heroin is prescribed in the UK. It brings together research evidence from the UK and elsewhere to provide a comprehensive review of the benefits and drawbacks of heroin prescription. Currently only a small number of UK doctors prescribe heroin. The government is planning a cautious and modest expansion of this treatment. This study considers whether heroin prescription is effective in the short and the long term.

The limits of primary care - OpenLearn

This resource is one of the units on the Open University's OpenLearn website, which provides free and open educational resources for learners and educators around the world. This unit explores questions of access to community services, using a fictionalised case study of two long-term heroin addicts to illustrate practical questions, about how services can be accessed, and moral questions, about entitlement to resources when their problems can be regarded as at least in part self-inflicted.

Understanding and modifying the impact of parents’ substance misuse on children

outline the huge literature on the potentially negative impact on children of growing up with a parent who has an alcohol or drug problem, the risk factors that can exacerbate this effect, and resilience and the protective factors that can reduce it. Clear ways that practitioners can intervene to reduce risk and to increase resilience are discussed.

The incarceration of drug offenders: an overview

This report published by the Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme in partnership with the International Centre for Prison Studies at Kings College London, revisits the topic of the incarceration of drug offenders [IDPC, UK].

Most governments make strong statements about the need to maintain, and often increase, police activity and penal sanctions for drug users. This approach, it was claimed, is based on the idea that strong enforcement, and widespread incarceration, will deter potential users and dealers from becoming involved in the illegal drug market.