Supplementary memorandum submitted by
Ministry of Justice
Following my letter of 14 December, you
have requested further information on two points.
The full details of the Lancet study I referenced
in annex C of my letter are as follows:
EFFECTIVENESS OF
COMMUNITY TREATMENTS
FOR HEROIN
AND CRACK
COCAINE ADDICTION
IN ENGLAND:
A PROSPECTIVE, IN-TREATMENT
COHORT STUDY
Dr John Marsden PhD, Brian Eastwood MSc,
Colin Bradbury BSc, Annette Dale-Perera BSc,, Michael Farrell
MRCPsych, Paul Hammond MSc, Jonathan Knight BA, Kulvir Randhawa
BSc, Craig Wright BA (for the National Drug Treatment Monitoring
System Outcomes Study Group).
The Lancet, Volume 374, Issue 9697, Pages 1262-1270,
10 October 2009.
In answer to your request for further sentencing
data, information from 2009 has not been through court and
central government validation processes and is therefore not yet
available. However, annex A includes provisional data for 2008 along
with validated 2006 figures, giving you three years of comparable
data. The 2008 data are likely to be subject to minor adjustments
as final checks are carried out.
It has come to light that a classification error
was made when collating the original supply and possession figures.
Courts record sentencing figures on crack cocaine separately from
powder cocaine but not under a general heading of "cocaine".
Supply and possession information on crack was therefore inadvertently
omitted from the tables in my previous letter. I apologise for
this error but am pleased to be able to rectify it at this stage
so that you have available to you full data for the three years.
February 2010
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