FDS Insight Magazine Jun - Sep 2023

45 to have something like this, to remove the methamphetamine from the body, so that they can do what they need to give care to that patient,’ Shetty said. Variety of solutions needed NIDA is also funding research into devices that could restore breathing or a user-friendly device to counteract cardiac arrhythmias from drug overdoses. They’re also working on a device that could deliver naloxone automatically, similar to an insulin pump for diabetes. But Volkow said that raises the question of whether someone with an opioid use disorder who’s seeking out illicit fentanyl will wear a device that will monitor them continuously. ‘No matter what technology or medication or intervention that we are developing, we have to be aware that it is possible that they will not be useful for everyone,’ Volkow said. ‘Then it becomes important to have various alternatives.’ J. Baumann, Bloomberg Law (24/2/23) United Kingdom UK IS STILL WAGING ON UNWINNABLE WAR ON DRUGS n July 2022, the Home Office of the United Kingdom published a white paper titled Swift, Certain, Tough: New Consequences for Drug Possession, outlining a new three-tiered punishment system for drug possession. Merseyside police raid a home as part of a drug- control operation in Liverpool, Britain December 6, 2021 [Christopher Furlong/Pool via Reuters] Aimed at targeting middle-class people who use drugs recreationally, who the government blames for fuelling crime in the country, the white paper proposes to require first-time offenders to pay for and attend a ‘drugs awareness course’; second-time offenders to be subjected to randomised drug tests and to attend more extensive drugs awareness programmes; and third-time offenders to be charged and, if convicted, punished under a new Drug Reduction Order. According to the white paper, this new order would include four possible ‘interventions’: exclusion from certain venues and events, passport confiscation, driving licence disqualification and ‘tagging’ with drug use monitoring bracelets (however, the Home Office itself admits the technology that would make the fourth intervention possible does not yet exist). The draconian white paper is the latest offensive in the UK government’s decades-old war on drugs in which it has repeatedly attempted – and failed – to reduce the demand and supply for I