DS Daily - 23rd July 2012

The BRIT TRUST is sponsoring DrugScope's Twitter feed

Thank you to the BRIT TRUST for sponsoring DrugScope's Twitter feed

Walk the line

While recovery champions are being urged into the spotlight, relapse lurks in the wings. How effective is the supporting cast in helping them protect their own recovery? By Harry Shapiro. Additional reporting by Caroline Oubridge | Druglink magazine, DrugScope, UK

Scotland is Europe’s new drug capital as nearly one in ten admit to taking Ecstasy

Scotland has been revealed as being top of the European league table for illegal drug abuse. Almost one in ten Scots have admitted using Ecstasy, more than double the rate in most other countries, according to statistics compiled by the European Monitoring Centre for Drug and Drug Addiction | The Scotsman, UK

EU calls for widespread methadone and syringes to prevent disease

European Union drug misuse and disease control agencies have come together to offer guidance on how to prevent injection-related disease spread in Europe. Towards the top of the list are widespread injecting equipment supply and heroin substitute prescribing, but neither chimes well with the recovery focus of current British addiction policies | Drug and Alcohol Findings, UK

Big Benefits Survey

The Disability Benefits Consortium has launched a survey for people who are claiming (or have tried to claim) disability benefits. It asks about ESA, DLA and back to work support. Please share it with your service users | Disability Benefits Consortium, UK

Welfare Adviser Survey

The Disability Benefits Consortium has launched a second survey specifically for welfare rights advisers to ask about changes they have seen following Harrington’s reviews of the WCA. Please forward to any advisers your service works with | Disability Benefits Consortium, UK

Bank secrecy masks a world of crime and destruction

Last week's US Senate report into industrial-scale money laundering at banking giant HSBC reads like a John Grisham novel. Terrorists vie with Mexican drug lords for a place in the report's often breathless narrative that is as absorbing as it is alarming - editorial | Observer, UK

Global banks are the financial services wing of the drug cartels

As HSBC executives apologise to the US Senate for laundering drugs money, the fact is that nothing changes | Guardian, UK

Alcohol curfew on trains begins

Conductors and station staff, working with British Transport Police (BTP), had been briefed to inform passengers about how the new by-law would operate, with the aim of raising awareness rather than making arrests | The Herald, Scotland, UK

Tobacco packaging consultation extended

In response to requests, the deadline for responding to the plain packaging consultation has been extended by one month, to 10 August | Department of Health, UK

Anna's charity was bid candy for the Work Programme. Now it's bankrupt

Big companies use small charities to win prime contracts from Duncan Smith's programme. But where's the proof it works? | Guardian, UK

Joan Bakewell tackles taboo of aged addiction

Joan Bakewell, the Labour peer, is making a documentary for Panorama about a hidden alcohol problem among senior citizens. | Telegraph, UK

Drugnet Europe 79

EMCDDA's quarterly newsletter, provides regular information on the agency's activities to a broad readership | EMCDDA

Stockholm needle exchange gets go-ahead

Officials have approved a move to launch a needle exchange scheme for Stockholm’s drug addicts | Ice News, Iceland

A Collaborative Approach to Reduce Drug Use and Prevent HIV Transmission

Director Kerlikowske participated in a preconference hosted by the International AIDS Society to help kick off the 2012 International AIDS Conference in Washington D.C. Director Kerlikowske underscored the Obama Administration’s commitment to preventing drug use and its consequences, particularly the transmission of HIV | ONDCP, USA

U.S. expands war on drugs into Africa

In a significant expansion of the war on drugs, the United States has begun training an elite unit of counternarcotics police in Ghana and planning similar units in Nigeria and Kenya as part of an effort to combat the Latin American trafficking organizations that are increasingly using Africa to smuggle cocaine into Europe | SF Gate, USA