As the UK sees a record number of drug overdose deaths, calls have been made for the Government to pilot Overdose Prevention Centres in a bid to end the national crisis.
The Faculty of Public Health (FPH), a membership organisation of public health professionals across the UK and around the world, has led a cross-sector call for the UK Government to pilot Overdose Prevention Centres (OPCs).
70 organisations and a number of individual signatories have made the call, stating they can “no longer accept the UK’s record number of drug-related deaths without implementing all available evidence-based interventions to save lives and protect health.”
The UK saw a record number of drug-related deaths in 2020, a total of 4,561 in England and Wales – a number up by 3.8 per cent from 2019. According to the Government’s statistics, approximately half of all 2020 drug deaths involved opiates.
The call follows the Government’s announcement of a decade-long crackdown on drugs, which will see a record amount of funding to help people get treatment for their drug use. The FPH call states the plan “fails to go far enough in implementing a full public health approach as they do not include setting up Overdose Prevention Centres (OPCs).”
It continues to say: “Drug deaths are avoidable, and it is unacceptable that we see evidence-based actions to prevent harm such as OPCs go unutilised in the UK.”
Non-profit drug reform organisation, Drug Science, has signed the call along with reform organisation Release Drugs, Law Enforcement Action Partnership, the All Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the British Medical Association (BMA) Board of Science and more.
Speaking to Psychedelic Health, Drug Science CEO, David Badcock, commented: “Safer Injecting Facilities (SIFs) will save lives, and help to build a strong, trusting relationship between healthcare professionals and people with entrenched drug problems. Evidence from around the world proves this. And because of that supportive relationship, people could be helped to overcome an addiction for the very first time.
“Drug deaths have recently hit record levels. That’s why we fully support the Faculty of Public Health’s calls, and it’s why we set up the Drug Science Enhanced Harm Reduction Working Group in 2020 – to further build the evidence base and to make clear, once and for all, that SIFs are a rational, effective and humane response to an escalating crisis.”
Last week, Drug Science responded to the Government’s new drug strategy to say it must “adopt a rational, evidence-based approach of drug control” and that other policies must be pursued in parallel of the strategy.
This included the development and provision of new approaches to addiction treatment, including increasing research into promising alternatives such as psilocybin and ketamine, and piloting safe injection rooms, which have been proven to save lives.
Recent research has suggested that psychedelics may hold promise in treating a variety of substance use disorders, including opioid use disorder (OUD), however, research into psychedelics in the UK is difficult due to the scheduling of the substances.
The Drug Science Medical Psychedelics Working Group has highlighted that: “…current UK regulations have created serious and considerable barriers to legitimate research associated with Schedule 1 regulations. While current legislation does not preclude scientific research with these drugs, it does make them significantly more difficult, time-consuming and costly to study.”
The FPH call highlights that there is available evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of OPCs in preventing deaths and facilitating patient referrals to treatment services, including “the adoption of safer injecting practices to reduce blood-borne virus transmission.”
The organisations state: “…we also see no evidence linking OPCs to increased drug use, criminal activity, or associated policing problems. Indeed, the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee on drug policy, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce, and the Independent Working Group on Drug Consumption rooms have all recognised the clear evidence in support of Overdose Prevention Centres as an effective public health intervention.”
The Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group (CDPRG) has also joined the call.
The call concludes to sat that: “With numbers of drug deaths consistently rising for the past seven years, it is clear that current strategies to tackle this crisis are failing to deliver for populations across the UK. Unless the Government follows the evidence to take further action, we are likely to see these rates of preventable deaths continue to rise.
“With evidence supporting the effectiveness of OPCs as a harm reduction measure, we call on Government to take steps towards funding pilots on their implementation to save lives and reduce harm.”
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