In the interests of personal health, drug users have been more than ready to accept clean injecting equipment from drug agencies, and also talk in explicit details about injecting techniques. But trying to get them to talk about safe sex…
Tag Archive for harm reduction
Druglink article 1999 – Getting the point across: a cheap, effective, brief intervention to reduce injecting by Neil Hunt, Garry Stillwell and Paul Griffiths
Since the 1980s, targeted interventions with injecting drug users have largely involved secondary prevention strategies intended to reduce the risk of HIV and make injecting less harmful, rather than primary prevention work that reduces the numbers transitioning to injecting. The…
Druglink article 2014 – 1988-1992: Everything starts with an E
1985 saw the first mention of ecstasy in the UK press. It came in the November edition of a style magazine called The Face. The magazine dubbed ecstasy as ‘the yuppie way of knowledge’, showing that back then, the drug…
Druglink article 2014 – 1987: Time to build bridges – NA and the ‘Minnesota Method’ in Britain by Brian Wells
There was much that was unhelpful and counter-productive in the sector ‘abstinence v harm reduction’ furore that kicked off in 2008 after the government struggled to respond effectively to media claims of treatment ineffectiveness. However from the ashes of that…
Druglink article 2014 – 1986: HIV and injecting drug use by David Turner
It was in 1981 that the link was first made in the USA between injecting drug use and the risk of contracting HIV, with the first UK drug-related infections reported in Scotland in 1983. From this was born the notion…
Druglink article 2014 – New Model Army by Ian Wardle
New Model Army (PDF) The very concepts that glue together our drug treatment system are under attack for being too entrenched in medicine. Ian Wardle looks at the emerging challengers to a status quo that has dominated policy and practice for more…
Druglink article 2014 – 2008-2009 The Recovery Debate by Mike Ashton and Neil McKeganey
Around Guy Fawkes night in November 2007, a whole box of fireworks exploded in the face of the drug treatment system, when the BBC asserted that only 3% of those who went into treatment became ‘drug free’. There were arguments…
Druglink article 1998 – Study safely: an exercise in partnership by Patrick Branigan and Claire Foxley
College students use drugs. In fact, for many students, going to college is the first time they come into regular contact with drugs. In London alone, there are over half a million students, nearly 100,000 of whom are higher education…
Druglink article 1998 – The new orthodoxy: harm reduction goes AWOL by Andria Efthimiou-Mordaunt
It was the drug field’s big idea of the last decade. But just as it is gaining the international recognition it has deserved, we’re getting worrying reports from the good ship harm reduction. It’s perhaps time to ask – what’s…
Druglink article 1996 – The better-travelled treatment tourist: service overlap among heroin and cocaine users by John Strang, Michael Gossop, Beverly Powis and Paul Griffiths
In the last decade, there has been an unprecedented growth in the number and diversity of drug services. Needle / syringe exchanges and street agencies now provide services alongside the more traditional drug clinics. Interviews with community samples of 408…