27/09/2023
We made a field visit and met some of the people who oversee the operations at the Lorraine Hewitt House, a NHS-funded drug and alcohol treatment centre in Brixton. One of them was Martin, a member of the centre’s service user council, a panel of people who have lived experience with drug dependency that sit on the board that decides drug treatment policy at the local level. It was an insightful, educational meeting. Rarely do treatment centres give service users a voice, including in the UK itself. This one does.
That is why I’m in London by the way, to learn about drugs and drug policy under a fellowship with Release, UK’s national expert on drugs and drug policy. Prohibitionist and punitive approach to drugs have always been first and foremost about political control. It is rooted in the establishment’s attempt at using the criminal (in)justice system to suppress and stigmatise communities or peoples that were critical of them. But the war on drugs is obviously a massive failure, and there is a growing call to abolish a system that prefers to dehumanise and punish. Drug dependency is a public health issue, and our response should be evidence-based.
The Lorraine Hewitt House provides needle and syringe exchange (tukar jarum) and opioid substitution therapy (usually with m**hadone, buprenorphine or sometimes diamorphine) and other types of harm reduction programmes, including for amphetamine based substances like m**h and soon crack-cocaine. It also provides psychological support whereas Release would collaborate to provide legal services.
