A number of stakeholder agencies have published statements on the new national drug and alcohol strategy. These include: CityWide,¹ Gay Health Network,² Simon Communities³ and UISCE (Union for Improved Services, Communication and Education).⁴ The more health-led approach and the inclusion of alcohol in the strategy were widely welcomed. There were concerns, however, about how the strategy would be implemented in practice and the need for additional funding to do so. The statements are summarised below.

The new national drug and alcohol strategy (NDS), Reducing harm, supporting recovery: a health-led approach to drug and alcohol use in Ireland 2017—2025,¹ was informed by a number of inputs, including a public consultation process. The public were invited to provide feedback on what they thought of the 2009—2016 strategy and what issues should be considered in the development of the new strategy. They could provide this by making a written or oral submission to the Department of Health, completing a questionnaire, or attending one of six regional events. Submissions and questionnaires could be made or submitted over the phone, by email, by post, or through the Department of Health’s website. Furthermore, there was an event and questionnaire that specifically targeted young people. Report on public consultation undertaken to inform the new national drugs strategy was subsequently published in May 2017.²

In preparing Reducing harm, supporting recovery,¹ the Department of Health commissioned a performance measurement system to help determine the impact of the strategy on problem substance use at a population level. A performance measurement framework for Drug and Alcohol Task Forces² (DAFT) aims to capture how successful task forces are at reducing problem substance use within their own areas. This will help to identify both good practice and weaknesses in local responses and help to guide the allocation of resources to bring about better local services and systemic improvements.

In May 2017, CityWide Drugs Crisis Campaign launched a new area on its website dedicated to the evidence base for the decriminalisation of possession of drugs for personal use.¹ Decriminalisation in Ireland would involve changing the current law that defines possession of drugs for personal use as a criminal offence. This does not mean that possession for personal use would be legal, as non-criminal penalties may still be applied. Furthermore, it would not affect the law that makes the possession of drugs for sale or supply a criminal offence.

Internationally, there has been a growing focus on adopting a human-rights-based approach to drug policy. This topic has been covered in previous editions of Drugnet Ireland both in the national and international context.^1,2,3,4 With these articles in mind, there are a number of features of the new strategy that would suggest a more human-rights-based approach than in previous strategies:

• It takes a health-led approach to drug use.
• It is underpinned by the values of compassion, respect, equity, inclusion, partnership and evidence-informed.
• It incorporates human rights in some elements, for example introducing supervised injecting facilities and exploring approaches to the possession of small quantities of drugs.

In 2015, the Health Research Board (HRB) commissioned the Public Health Institute at Liverpool John Moores University to prepare a report on the most recent international evidence on responses to problem drug use. This was to support the steering committee working on a new drugs strategy. Incorporating evidence into policy has been a concern of several countries developing drugs strategies in recent years. Part of this process is identifying responses that have been shown to work but, just as importantly, identifying what evidence is relevant to the national situation, where the gaps in evidence are, and what interventions are shown not to be effective or produce harmful results.

The Health Research Board commissioned the Public Health Institute at Liverpool John Moores University to prepare a trends analysis on the drugs situation in Ireland. The drugs situation in Ireland: an overview of trends from 2005 to 2015¹ reviews the current drug situation in Ireland, analysing 10 years of data up to the most recent data available, with respect to the five European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) key indicators (prevalence of drug use, high risk drug use, treatment demand, drug-related deaths, and mortality and drug-related infectious diseases) as well as drug-related crime and supply.

The 10th Club Health International Conference on Nightlife, Substance Use and Related Health Issues took place in the Printworks in Dublin Castle on 24—26 May 2017.¹ It marked 20 years of Club Health conferences and was the first time the conference was held in Ireland. Club Health conferences enable researchers, practitioners and experts from a wide range of fields to meet, present and exchange on current and emerging evidence, policy and practice relating to protecting and promoting health in urban night-time settings as well as music festivals and holiday destinations with a clubbing or nightlife emphasis.

The first international conference in Ireland on recovery from drug addiction, Mainstreaming Recovery in Irish Drug Policy and Practice: the Challenge of Change, took place in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) on 8 September 2017. Organised by the Recovery Academy of Ireland, it was one of a number of events held during International Recovery Month to recognise, promote and celebrate recovery from addiction.

The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) is a global network of 163 non-governmental organisations (NGOs).¹ It focuses on issues related to drug production, trafficking and use, promoting objective and open debate on the effectiveness, direction and content of drug policies at national and international levels. The network supports evidence-based policies that are effective at reducing drug-related harm. In collaboration with their NGO partners, in July 2015, the IDPC launched an e-tool designed to map out the models of decriminalisation for drug use or possession of drugs for personal use globally. The IDPC identified 21 countries and jurisdictions that had adopted this legal position. There is also a link to the tool through the recently launched CityWide Drugs Crisis Campaign website area on decriminalisation discussed in another article in this issue of Drugnet.²