How does the 10 year drug strategy stand up to public health priorities and evidence
What is it about?
Published in 2022 in collaboration with the Faculty of Public Health and the Association of Directors of Public Health, this paper examines the UK Government's 2021 ten-year drugs strategy, "From Harm to Hope." A team of leading drug researchers, clinicians and public health specialists assess each of the strategy's three pillars: reducing drug supply through enforcement, rebuilding drug treatment services, and reducing demand through deterrence and education. The paper tests each pillar against the available evidence, identifies what the strategy gets right, such as new funding for drug treatment, and highlights where policies lack an evidence base or are likely to cause harm, particularly the expansion of punitive measures against people who use drugs.
Why is it important?
The UK was experiencing a drug-related death crisis when this strategy was published, with mortality rates among the highest in Europe and rising sharply across all four nations. This paper, endorsed by two major public health professional bodies, is a systematic, evidence-based verdict on whether government policy is fit to address that crisis. It finds that enforcement-led approaches to drug supply and demand have no reliable evidence of effectiveness, that punitive measures risk increasing stigma and reducing treatment uptake, and that key evidence-based interventions including overdose prevention centres, drug checking services, and diamorphine-assisted treatment are absent. It provides practitioners and policymakers with a referenced critique and a public health framework for drug policy reform grounded in human rights, harm reduction, and upstream determinants of drug-related harm.