Local authority public health teams and their partners can use this guidance to help them:

• assess intelligence about strong, adulterated or contaminated drugs
• issue public health alerts about such drugs
• It recommends approaches local areas may choose to adopt, adapt or use.

Drug alerts can inform both people who use drugs and health professionals of the risks. Issuing alerts can improve local recording and intelligence, and make responses more effective. The LDIS model can also help with drug-related death reviews.

Media reports and other warnings regarding new and/or novel, potent, adulterated or contaminated drugs have increased over the last decade. However, these reports are often inaccurate, rarely confirmed by toxicology tests and may sometimes be counterproductive to public health messages intended to reduce drug-related harms and deaths. An agreed local drug information system (LDIS) that uses consistent and efficient processes for sharing and assessing information, and issuing warnings where needed, can help ensure high-quality, effective information rapidly reaches the right people.

This document provides local authorities with information and advice to support them in assessing intelligence and issuing public health alerts on new and/or novel, potent, adulterated or contaminated drugs. It suggests systems and approaches that local areas may choose to adopt, adapt or use to inform their local systems. Advice on developing such a system was requested by delegates at a north of England event run by Public Health England (PHE) and much of the content derives from their input.2 It was developed for PHE by Michael Linnell, advised by a group including local authority and police representatives. The LDIS model proposed in this document is intended to respond to immediate risk, to be a low-cost, low-maintenance and multidisciplinary system that uses existing local expertise and resources. It uses elements from established local systems in Salford,18 Lancashire and Scotland.8 It is separate but complementary to the protocol used by PHE centres and national teams to assess drugs intelligence and, where required, issue national briefings or alerts.

The ambition is for an England-wide network of local systems that operate in a consistent and complementary way. Although the primary aim of a drug alert is to inform people who use drugs of an immediate risk an equally important aim of an LDIS is to inform professionals. It is not envisaged that adopting the LDIS model will lead to an increase in public drug alerts and in all likelihood the systematic approach suggested will mean the majority of intelligence received will be used to inform front-line staff. The information sharing will increase staff knowledge, therefore local recording and intelligence will be improved enabling a more effective response. The systematic approach to information gathering used in the LDIS model also has the potential to assist with drug-related death reviews. A summary of the evidence for drug alerts can be found in appendix 1.

See also, MS Word documents: 

• Local drug information system (LDIS) reporting form template (appendix 4) 
• Criteria for grading alerts guidance and form template (appendix 6)