This report, ‘Taking a New Line on Drugs’, comes at a timely moment for drugs strategy both in the UK and across the world. The special session of the United Nations General Assembly on the world drug problem, which took place in New York in April 2016, represented a missed opportunity to move on from the ‘war on drugs’ and take a new approach, despite the pioneering policies focused on public health and harm reduction being pursued by a number of nations. In the UK, the Psychoactive Substances Act came into effect in May 2016, and we await a refreshed Government drugs strategy later in the year.

‘Taking a New Line on Drugs’ assesses the situation in the UK as regards rising health harm from illegal drugs, with reference to their context within the wider ‘drugscape’ of legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco, and sets out a new vision for a holistic public health-led approach to drugs policy at a UK-wide level.