Synopses & Reviews
The "British System" is known world-wide as a highly effective means of managing heroin addiction. Drs. Strang and Gossop have for many years been actively involved in research into clinical practice. In this book, they present an overview of British drug policy set in the context of international activities, with contributions from key figures in the field, covering both historical and contemporary aspects of the evolving "British System." Several contributors give previously unrecorded accounts of events during critical phases in the evolution of the UK response to illicit drug use, while others outline the critical issues within today's policy reviews.
Table of Contents
PART I: The Problem
1. The Early Years of the British System in Practice
2. Drug Trends Since 1968
3. Flexible Hierarchies and Dynamic Disorder - The Trading and Distribution of Illicit Heroin in Britain and Europe, 1970-90
4. Drugs and Adolescence
5. Use of Public Health Indicators of the Extent and Nature of Drug Problems During the 1970s and 1980s
6. Women Drug Misusers: A Case for Special Consideration
7. The Arrival of HIV
8. Local and Regional Variations in Drug Misuse: The British Heroin Epidemic of the 1980s
9. Chasing the Dragon: The Development of Heroin Smoking in the United Kingdom
10. Use of Illegal Drugs in Northern Ireland
PART II: Clinical Responses
11. The Fall and Rise of the General Practitioner
12. The Creation of the Clinics: Clinical Demand and the Formation of Policy
13. Drug Clinics in the 1970s
14. Prescribing Heroin and Other Injectable Drugs
15 The Introduction of Community Drug Teams Across the UK.
16. The Development of the Voluntary Sector: No Further Need for Pioneers?
17. The Power Behind the Practice: Drug Control and Harm Minimization in Inter-agency and Criminal Law Contexts
18. Changes in Therapeutic Communities in the UK
19. Narcotics Anonymous (NA) in Britain
20. Minimizing Harm From Drug Use
PART III: Other Responses
21. Promoting New Services: The Central Funding Initiative and Other Mechanisms
22. Notification and the Home Office
23. The Growth of Information: The Development of Britains's National Drug Misuse Information Resource
24. Media- and School-based Approaches to Drug Education
25. HIV and Drugs Services - The Challenge of Change
26. The Relationship Between the State and Local Practice in the Development of National Policy on Drugs
27. The "British System": Visionary Anticipation or Masterly Inactivity?