Health services for people who use drugs require a
significant boost in funding and a shift towards early
intervention, harm reduction, strengthening of natural
supports and an increase in kaupapa Māori approaches if we
want a truly health-based approach to drugs, says the New
Zealand Drug Foundation Te Puna Whakaiti Pāmamae Kai
Whakapiri.
The Foundation outlined its vision for what
health, harm reduction, and addiction services should look
like for people who use drugs in a new paper, A
health-based approach to drug harm in
Aotearoa, released to coincide with the
global day of action for ‘Support.
Don’t Punish’, an international campaign pushing for
drug policies based on health and human
rights.
Executive Director Sarah Helm says that
existing services can’t keep up with demand and there is
little in place to help people until they have reached a
crisis point. She says that even then, people still might
not get help because of chronic underfunding of the sector.
The situation is compounded by drug laws that stop people
seeking help for fear of prosecution.
“It should be
easier to get help than it is to end up with a conviction or
in hospital,” she says. “We could stop so much harm and
save so much money if we offered people support
earlier.”
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Helm says a full overhaul of the
country’s drug laws is needed to transform the outcomes of
New Zealanders who use drugs, but much can be achieved with
health services and system changes, which the paper
highlights.
“People often ask us what we mean by a
‘health-based approach’ and what we would replace the
current approach with. For the health, harm reduction and
addictions sector, this is our answer,” she
says.
“If we redirected the massive amounts of money
we spend on ineffective crime and punishment approaches
towards what we’ve outlined in
this paper, the results would be transformative for New
Zealand.”
“The great news is some of this is
already happening. New services like drug checking have been
hugely successful and they have prevented untold harm and
saved lives. And established services like the needle
exchange have a long track record that shows how much harm
can be prevented with a health approach.”
“Now we
need to apply what we’ve learnt from these interventions
to the rest of our health system.”
“We desperately
need a system that understands what causes drug harm and
focuses on reducing it, rather than wasting money on failed
approaches that just cause more harm.”
The
paper includes a suite of recommended approaches,
including:
- ensuring people receive
non-judgemental primary health care, including appropriate
advice and screening - strengthening ‘natural
supports’ by better equipping friends, whānau and
communities to support people who need
help - increasing coverage of kaupapa Māori services
and boosting the Māori workforce - resourcing whānau
Māori who are doing the job that the health system is
currently failing to do - increasing the involvement
of people with lived and living experience in service design
and delivery - providing better harm reduction
information - ensuring adequate diagnosis and
treatment of conditions that increase the risk of substance
use disorder such as ADHD, chronic pain and mental health
disorders - expanding needle exchange and drug
checking services - introducing overdose prevention
centres - improving access to naloxone, an opioid
overdose reversal medicine - increasing the
availability of support and treatment, including those with
no or low entry
criteria
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