Cuts to drug addiction services has caused almost 11,000 deaths, study finds

Rehab support providers across the UK are urging the government to provide more for drug addiction services as the number of drug-related deaths have skyrocketed. 

A new report, by Rehabs UK, a rehabilitation support provider, has outlined the number of drug-related deaths in England and Wales has risen by 87.1% between 2012 and 2021. 

Researchers have discovered since the introduction of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act there has been a major increase in drug use and drug-related deaths across the UK and despite the government announcing its 10-year drug strategy in 2021, which includes a pledge to provide £780m to ‘rebuild the system’, not enough is being done. 

According to Rehabs UK, funds beyond the £780m payment are directed on ‘enforcement’ rather than on treatment and with current inflation rates, the organisation fears not enough money will be given to the cause. 

For 2022/23 £101.2m has been allocated in additional grants for treatment and recovery services, but before the Health and Social Care Act was proposed, the annual budget spent by the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse was £467m.

Experts found, when adjusted for inflation, £467m in 2012 is the equivalent of over £598.7m today. Even if the full £780m on drug treatment is to be spent over 3 years rather than 10, that’s a decrease of over 40% on previous annual spending.

As well as funding dropping for drug services in local authorities, funding for school drug and alcohol support programmes has fallen by 47%, with Yorkshire, the South-East and Outer London seeing the biggest cuts, according to the report. 

The latest figures from NHS Digital show the dire need for more attention to be brought this matter as just under 1,200 hospital admissions for narcotics poisonings in England last year were young people aged between 15-19 and a 2021 government report on drug use in young people also found 76% of them starting treatment for addiction between April 2019 and March 2020 began using substances before their 15th birthday. 

In 2012, when the Health and Social Care Act came into force, by 2013 the government moved addiction service funding in England and Wales from central government to local authorities, but each conservative government has cut funding to local authorities since 2010.

The report highlights that aside from the £780m, no set limit has been considered for addiction treatment services during the current financial pressures, meaning training provisions and staff roles are decreasing, with local authorities dipping into their savings to keep the services afloat. 

According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, five out of 12 English regions have no addiction psychiatry trainees whatsoever. 

Lester Morse, Director of Rehabs UK said: ‘This government, and those before it, fail to see the damage they cause.

‘Not to mention the strain these cuts place on those of us who are left to pick up the pieces. We and other rehab services do what we can, but the government must do more. The figures speak for themselves, the cuts have destroyed lives.’

‘The government’s Drug Strategy is a farce,’ Mr Morse adds, ‘for all their talk about how this is a record amount of spending on the drug treatment services, it is insufficient and barely gets us back to where services were before 2012.’

Photo by Myriam Zilles