Amy Winehouse's death prompts review of drug rehab waiting times

The star’s father claimed to mourners at her funeral yesterday that addicts face a two-year wait for rehab on the NHS.In an emotional eulogy to his 27-year-old daughter, Mitch Winehouse said he hoped her death would prompt greater awareness of addicts’ plight.Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, today pledged to back Mr Winehouse’s campaign and investigate the speed of access...

Successful lab tests on a potential vaccine for heroin addiction

Scientists are reporting development and successful initial laboratory tests on the key ingredient for a much-needed vaccine to help individuals addicted to heroin abstain from the illicit drug. Their study appears in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.Kim D. Janda and colleagues note that heroin use cost the United States more than $22 billion in 1996 annually due to medical and law enforcement...

Rethinking Addiction’s Roots, and Its Treatment

There is an age-old debate over alcoholism: is the problem in the sufferer’s head — something that can be overcome through willpower, spirituality or talk therapy, perhaps — or is it a physical disease, one that needs continuing medical treatment in much the same way as, say, diabetes or epilepsy?Dr....

Illegal drink theory in fatal blast

Investigators are today trying to find out if an industrial unit where five men were killed in an explosion was being used to brew alcohol illegally.Firefighters found the men inside the unit after the blast at the Broadfield Lane industrial estate in Boston, Lincolnshire, yesterday evening.A sixth man was taken to hospital suffering from severe burns.Teams of emergency workers were scrambled to the...

cannabis social clubs in Spain

The room looks like the office of any small membership organisation: old worn furniture, jammed bookshelves, promotional posters, dented filing cabinets, random boxes of materials that have never been filed. What stands out, though, is the cloying smell of marijuana that permeates the room of the Pannagh Association in the city centre of Bilbao in northern Spain. Pannagh’s president, a young, energetic...

The number of drug deaths in Britain is among the highest in the world, new figures show.

llegal substances killed 2,278 people in a year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.It ranks Britain sixth in the world, with only the US, Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Iran and Mexico having more.Most of these deaths were caused by opioids, such as heroin, followed by sedatives, cocaine, amphetamine-type stimulants and ecstasy.The  report also warned that, while drug...