Blog

Kathy Gyngell - 18 April 2013 - Prisons & Addiction

The drug consumption rooms that Brighton’s committed drug legalising Green MP, Caroline Lucas, proposes, risk inflating the very public health and social problems she claims they would mitigate, writes Kathy Gyngell. Brighton has an acute drug problem.  But the much media-hyped ‘independent’ report laid before Brighton Council today offers no analysis ...

Kathy Gyngell - 25 February 2013 - Prisons & Addiction

Kathy Gyngell authored the Addictions reports for Breakdown and Breakthrough Britain, the Conservative Party’s 2007 Social Justice Policy Review. Her recent reports, The Phoney War on Drugs (CPS, 2009) and Breaking the Habit: why the state should stop dealing drugs and start doing rehab (CPS, 2011) have attracted widespread media coverage and attention. She researches, writes and ...

Kathy Gyngell - 12 December 2012 - Prisons & Addiction

With the publication of their “Breaking the Cycle” report, the Home Affairs Select Committee has thrown its weight behind the reverse case – the case for increasing demand and, in time, for the legalisation of all drugs in the UK, writes CPS Addiction expert Kathy Gyngell. Far from ‘Breaking the Cycle’ of ...

Kathy Gyngell - 07 November 2012 - Prisons & Addiction

‘Let ‘em use’ or ‘lock ‘em up’. Recent demands for drug legalisation suggest that drugs policy is a matter of ‘either/ or’. And that’s what the voters of Colorado and Washington must have believed to risk this ‘putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum’ moment.But this polarisation is misinformed ...

Kathy Gyngell - 15 September 2012 - Prisons & Addiction

Kathy Gyngell authored the Addictions reports for Breakdown and Breakthrough Britain, the Conservative Party’s 2007 Social Justice Policy Review. Her recent reports, The Phoney War on Drugs (CPS, 2009) and Breaking the Habit: why the state should stop dealing drugs and start doing rehab (CPS, 2011) have attracted widespread media coverage and attention. She researches, ...

Sarah Bailey - 11 September 2012 - Prisons & Addiction

Disgracefully, there is no adolescent residential drug rehab in the UK. This is why the Centre for Policy Studies has just hosted an urgent Teen Rehab Action meeting writes CPS Executive Assistant Sarah Bailey.Last week the Centre for Policy Studies Prisons and Addiction Forum hosted a meeting to discuss the need for ...

Huseyin Djemil - 03 May 2012 - Prisons & Addiction

The Government committed  to transforming drug treatment when it took office. The idea of their Putting Full Recovery First plans is to give drug addicts and offenders a second chance - to free them from their dependency. Huseyin Djemil (CPS author of Inside Out - how to get drugs out of prisons) fears their recovery has ...

Kathy Gyngell - 06 March 2012 - Prisons & Addiction

The challenge for the international community has been to establish a regulatory system that ensures that the legitimate medical and scientific needs for opiates are met, whilst preventing diversion to illicit markets. Its achievement has been to limit worldwide adult illicit drug use to 5% while meeting these needs, says ...

Huseyin Djemil - 16 December 2011 - Prisons & Addiction

I knew of Crispin Blunt MP prior to him becoming prisons minister and I was reasonably hopeful that he would do a good job.  After all, in opposition, his boss Ken Clarke had been saying all the right things. Rehabilitation back on the agenda and a strong commitment to drug ...

Kathy Gyngell - 01 December 2011 - Prisons & Addiction

The Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) is fast becoming our new public moral arbiter. With its urbane and intelligent chair, Keith Vaz MP, it has increasingly taken centre stage, dissecting in turn, responsibility for the riots, phone hacking and border control.Their launch this morning, of a comprehensive review into drug ...

Kathy Gyngell - 22 November 2011 - Prisons & Addiction

Drug policy has become ‘a taboo area’; politicians lack the ‘courage’ to contradict ‘crude’ assertions about going ‘soft’ on drugs; “‘kneejerk’ opposition to change is allowed to continue unchallenged”. So Baroness Manningham Buller would have us believe. This is why politicians won’t take up her confused pro drug legalisation and ...

Kathy Gyngell - 09 November 2011 - Prisons & Addiction

Watchdogs need watching, regardless.  Lost in debate over regulation versus a free and independent press is the detail of human failure. Last week we heard that safeguards intended to protect individuals from unnecessary and illegal surveillance, though statutory, had been completely ineffectual. A report on the working of the Regulation ...

Kathy Gyngell - 25 October 2011 - Prisons & Addiction

“Quite frankly, if politicians don't trust the people, why on earth should the people trust the politicians?” Last night Eurosceptic Labour MP Gisela Stuart accused William Hague of executing a 180-degree turn from his previous position on the referendum. She might have accused the BBC of – over the years – successfully ...

Kathy Gyngell - 10 October 2011 - Prisons & Addiction

Last Friday the Dutch government committed to classifying high-potency marijuana - cannabis with 15%+ THC - to the Dutch ‘List 1’ of ‘hard drugs’ joining drugs like cocaine and ecstasy. This is the latest step in the country's ongoing reversal of its famed ‘tolerance’ policy - ...

Kathy Gyngell - 21 September 2011 - Prisons & Addiction

With the report of her CPS factsheet "Misleading and Irresponsible Drug Prevalence Statistics: The Global Commission on Drug Policy’s provocative claims of non existent rises do not further rational drug policy debate", Research Fellow Kathy Gyngell examines the impact on the Global Comission and the Liberal ...