Something needs to be done about drugs in UK

I have not been able to obtain any info for if NARCAN works on reversing opioid OD if there are other drugs present.

I haven't;t RTFT but these ignorant 'reckons' piss me off too much and I end up posting too soon. You don't know enough to have an opinion. Everyone is entitled to one but ignorance is killing people.

Firstly on the above. I am naloxone trained. They won't reverse benzos or alcohol so if that's the main thing killing the person, they are dead. Unless you can get an ambulance to them very quickly. Naloxone also needs to be used carefully. You can inject or nasally administer it, the person can seem fine, but the dose they took may mean they fall back into OD if they don't get more doses/medical care.

On harm reduction and treatment. Harm reduction has been fucked up in Canada. Canada has a habit of doing something that another country did excellently, and doing it with less money, missing pieces, poorly administered and making things worse. It's like antibiotics; for it to work, you have to do it properly.

You need:

Decriminalisation of all drugs
Properly funded treatment and housing
Properly funded healthcare
Properly funded MH care
Safe supply
Safe use
Supportive second stage housing
'Dry' accommodation which is properly dry, not damp

Last, but completely ignored, proper judicial and support systems that deal with the actual cause of drug addiction, male violence. I worked in treatment and drug and alcohol services and most of the people i worked with had adverse childhood experiences that stemmed from DV, CSA and PTSD, almost always from male violence. Stop that, you stop addiction.

Basically the way it should work would be someone who is addicted could approach the GP in the same way someone addicted to smoking would. The GP should refer to an addiction clinic who have a speciality in this and can make a judgment on treatment.

They can then be prescribed an opiate via a clinic as a first step to get themselves stable before moving through a process to get themselves clean. Most poor behaviour from addicts comes from being desperate to finance their next hit and the drugs being cut with all sorts. If they have a guaranteed, safe daily supply then they can focus attention on other areas like getting secure housing, a job, accessing therapy etc. This period of stability will make it much much easier to then wean off the drugs.

It will also be cheaper than the amount these people currently cost in terms of policing, emergency treatment, court/prison, homelessness services etc.

All drugs should be legalised, standardised and sold in pharmacies

No govt has the gumption to do it

Goodbye most of the criminality

Soigneur: Of these deaths 3127 involved “drug misuse” (relating to drugs controlled under the law) So 1800 (36%) of your quoted drug deaths were from legal drugs.

Simple people are attracted to simple ideas.

Not quite sure how executions for drug dealing will avoid the problems of getting the wrong person that executions for murder have. Maybe because they are old and ugly it's easier ?

Which drug dealers would we charge for murder? Is that the man at the top of the food chain or the peddlers on street corners, dime a dozen, that the law already penalise?

Like every business of demand and supply, you first need to deal with the appetite for drug taking. It seems a casual sport for many. People indulge in drug taking all around us, but find the drug trade abhorrent 🤔.

Air pollution is harmful to human health and damages the environment. The researchers estimated that 48,625 adults die prematurely each year in the UK due to particulate matter pollution. Over 1,200 deaths in people under 18 years of age are estimated to be caused by air pollution every year.
Better ban cars and industry then.

I know what will stop them dying from drugs!

Killing them for selling drugs!

But as we've seen, the "war on drugs" is morality dressed up in faux concern for "other people.

Singapore have a mandatory death penalty for drug dealing: www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/04/singapore-unlawfully-executes-national-for-drug-offences/

I don't think that's a step forwards.

Well quite - although that is going to tail off as smoking is now such a minority hobby and the new progressive age limit for buying tobacco will see to the hardcore remainder.

You'll never effectively address the harms done by drugs without first meeting the care needs of people with serious mental illness, who make up a vastly disproportionate percentage of users.

We've lost 25% of mental health beds in the UK in a decade.

Drug rehab in the UK has been hugely harmed by cuts to local authority funding under the Conservatives.

My BIL is a drug user in a developing country. He has been known to use crack and heroin, but these are expensive so not routine. His drugs of choice include aviation fuel, glue, khat, weed and copious quantities of alcohol. People will get high on something if they want to. You can regulate access and tackle route causes, but prohibition has never worked.

Surely by that logic drugs also serve a purpose - to get high (or low in some cases)

All dwarfed by the 70,000+ a year dying from smoking.

Morphine and other products derived from opium are highly addictive, it's not up for debate, they are, it's a fact, there's nothing for you to understand.

Of course you won't get addicted if you're given a dose once to relieve acute, short-lived pain, but it really doesn't take long.

So why do you get to rule the world ?

However, OP is way off the mark with the "beautiful young people" rhetoric - the peak age for dying of an OD is 40-49.

It really is awful. But there’s no quick fix and harsher penalties won’t touch it. As other posters have said, we need to look into the root causes and actually support addicts, but it’s just not possible when services are on the bones of their arse.

Many more people die of drug poisoning than as road casualties in the UK.

2022 road fatalities: 1,711 (Great Britain numbers)
2022 drug poisoning deaths: 4,907 (and that's just England and Wales so the figure once you including Scotland and NI is substantially higher)

So should they be banned?