Breaking the Habit: Why the state should stop dealing drugs and start doing rehab
In this new report, leading drugs analyst Kathy Gyngell shows that:
- New Labour’s approach to drug addiction – prescribing addicts with methadone in an attempt to reduce crime and improve addicts’ health – has been an expensive failure (new estimates for this paper indicate that the annual cost of maintaining treatment and paying benefits to the 320,000 problem drug users is £3.6 billion).
- Coalition proposals to introduce Payment by Result (PbR) trials are well-intentioned but doomed to failure, not least because they are being run by the very organisations responsible for the current failure of policy
- There is an alternative. The problem is one of addiction. The solution lies in freeing people from it. This is being achieved with remarkable success rates by small modern rehabilitation units – none of which have been allowed to apply to run the Coalition’s PbR trials.
Kathy Gyngell argues that PbR can work if the importance of abstinence-based rehabilitation is recognised and if bids from such operators are sought. And, crucially, if there is one simple measure of success: that of six months abstinence from all drugs and alcohol.
Media Impact:
- At Prime Minister’s Questions on 29th June 2011, David Cameron supported the findings of Kathy Gyngell’s report “Breaking the Habit: Why the state should stop dealing drugs and start doing treatment”. To read the quote, click here.
- BBC News:
o Drugs treatment policy for England doomed to failure
o Drug policy in England ‘grossly imbalanced’
o Ran as 3rd news bulletin item for both BBC TV and Radio through the day of publication - Sky News: Treating Drug Addicts ‘Costs £3.6bn A Year’
- Daily Telegraph: Benefits and treatment for drug addicts cost £3.6 billion a year
- The Independent: Failure to help drug addicts is costing Britain £3.6 billion a year
- Daily Express: £3.6bn drug addict bill
- Yorkshire Post: Failure to reform drug users costing £3.6bn a year
- News of the World: Addicts cost you £3.6 billion
- Mirror: Taxpayers foot £3.6 billion bill for drug addicts
- People: Giving methadone substitute to heroin addicts costs Britain £3.6 billion a year, says new report
- Wales Online: Taxpayers footing £3.6 billion bill to look after drug junkies
- South Yorkshire Times: £3.6 billion cost of treating drug users
- Skegness Standard: £3.6 billion cost of treating drug users
- BOT – Drug Policy Central: Britain’s drug treatment policy criticised in new report
- Brighouse Echo: £3.6 billion cost of treating drug users
- Fresh Business Thinking: Addicts trapped in £3.2 billion cycle of benefit dependency
- News Tonight: Britain spends £3.6 billion a year on treatment for 32,000 drug addicts
- Press TV: Britain’s drugs policy ‘doomed to fail’
