Drug Abuse

HC Deb 26 June 1985 vol 81 cc427-8W

Mr. Corbyn

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) if he will estimate the amount of money spent by each district health authority within the North-East Thames regional health authority since 1982 on (a) alcoholism and (b) drug dependency;

(2) if he will publish the guidelines on the expenditure by district health authorities on drug rehabilitation.

Mr. John Patten

Information on the expenditure by district health authorities on services for alcohol and drug misusers is not available centrally.

Mr. Alton

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what was the total amount allocated by his Department to counter (a) all forms of drug abuse and (b) heroin abuse in particular, in each of the last 10 years for which figures are available; and for each year how much of the total allocation was spent on (i) publicity and advertising, (ii) funding of rehabilitation or treatment centres for drug users and (iii) grants to other organisations.

Mr. John Patten

Information is not available in the form requested. The cost of treatment provided for drug misuers by the family practitioner and general psychiatric and other hospital services is not separately identified. £630,000 was made available from central funds in 1984–85 for the Department's drug misuse, education and information campaign including publicity and advertising and £2 million has been allocated to this campaign for 1985–86. Central funding for services for the treatment of rehabilitation of drug misusers for the past 10 years has been as follows:

	£
1975–76	74,000
1976–77	104,000
1977–78	107,597
1978–79	180,593
1979–80	210,842
1980–81	285,690
1981–82	347,360
1982–83	433,174
1983–84	1,351,539
1984–85	2,453,967

Mr. Higgins

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make additional resources available for the Worthing district health authority's proposals to help deal with the problem of drug addiction.

Mr. John Patten

An application under the central funding initiative from Worthing health authority is currently being considered.