Poverty Trapped (2021), is an independent report by John Penrose MP, which draws on consultations with academics, thinktanks and topic experts to investigate the root causes of poverty, identifying the glass ceilings that must be dismantled to achieve its abolition. Locating addiction as a key impediment to financial security, Penrose joins a growing number of MPs evincing cross-party support for revising the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
“[O]ne type of addiction – to drugs - is different from all the others because of the political obstacles which stand in the way of finding answers. By any measure, our current approach is failing badly: for example the graph below shows how the number of drug addicts has soared in the 50 years since our current legislation (the Misuse Of Drugs Act 1970) was introduced, having been broadly stable for many years before.”
The report recognises that upscaling early intervention and preventative education are instrumental to redressing the conditions that increase the likelihood of addiction in the first place, and endorses the stance taken by Prof. Dame Carol Black to improve prevention and treatment services and equip local authorities to properly address the issues they face, ahead of the publication of her recommendations for tackling the drugs crisis (published July 2021).
“If we don’t address [the inadequacy of current drug treatment services], we will be doomed to keep treating symptoms rather than solving the underlying causes of the problem, so this is the vital missing element which is essential to fix our drug addiction epidemic, and the poverty which it creates.”
The CDPRG welcomes this report’s identification of drug-related issues as a crucial element of addressing poverty. This presages Dame Carol Black’s assertion on the publication of her recommendations for improving treatment services that the Government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda cannot be achieved without this.