Issue - meetings

Anne Bristow, Corporate Director of Adult and Community Services, and Sonia Drozd, Drug Strategy Manager jointly presented the report and explained that new psychoactive substances (NPS), often referred to as ‘legal highs’, were unregulated substances being openly sold to the public and why there were problems in making them banned substances under legislation.  NPS were untested and there were no quality controls during production and NPS certainly could not be considered safe just because they were not banned substances. NPS could also have a significant detrimental impact on the user’s mental and physical health. 

The Board’s attention was drawn to the pilot survey of young people undertaken by the Substance Misuse Strategy team to understand the use of NPS and in view of those results the survey was now going to be expanded in order to obtain a much more accurate insight into NPS locally.  The Chair said that she was concerned about the percentage of young people in the pilot who had used or knew somebody who had used NPS.

Sharon Morrow, Chief Operating Officer, Barking and Dagenham Clinical Commissioning Group, advised that she would be meeting with clinical directors and would see if the survey could be raised with GPs and other health professionals to increase awareness and improve evidence capture.

Councillor Carpenter raised misuse of over-the-counter and prescribed medications.  Anne Bristow said that this issue was coming more to the fore and it was intended to produce a scoping report for the Board for consideration in the autumn. 

In response to a question Sonia Drozd confirmed that there had not been any increase in individuals accessing drug treatment services for advice and support since ‘Khat’ had been banned.

Councillor Turner said that he felt that legal highs and medication misuse should form part of our overall substance misuse strategy.  Discussion was then held on the mobility of the supply of NPS and the benefit for cross-borough working with adjoining boroughs.

Sarah Barker questioned if schools and teachers were aware of NPS and stressed the need to ensure that that work would be undertaken in conjunction with the schools, young people’s safety group, BAD Youth Forum and young people to raise awareness amongst young people to the dangers associated with NPS.  Helen Jenner confirmed that PHSE in schools now included NPS to make sure that teachers and students are being informed.

The Board received the report and:

(i)  Noted the work to date and discussed GPs, pharmacies and other health partners and schools actions in response to this problem.

(ii)  Agreed this issue should be part of the Substance Misuse Strategy and requested Partners to disseminate information to their staff and that cross borough working may be beneficial, especially in regards to spreading information and awareness to the public and professionals.

(iii)  Requested a report on over the counter medication abuse at a future Board meeting.