Drug addiction should be combated through abstinence-based recovery schemes,
says comedian and actor on Newsnight
Ben Quinn
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 August 2012 20.08 EDT
Resources should be diverted away from methadone schemes and diverted towards
abstinence-based recovery initiatives as a way of treatment drug addiction,
Russell Brand urges in a forthcoming BBC documentary in which the comedian and
actor says that he is jealous of his past life as a drug addict.
Brand said that the death of Amy Winehouse was a catalyst for his decision to
make the BBC Three documentary, Russell Brand: From Addiction to Recovery, in
which he is shown watching a clip of his younger self preparing to take heroin.
Calling for a major "attitudinal shift" in terms of the way drug addicts were
viewed, he told BBC Newsnight on Friday that the government was directing too
much funds towards initiatives which see some 150,000 people being prescribed
methadone each year.
But the entertainer, who also now abstains from alcohol, stopped short of
calling for the decriminalisation of drugs.
"I don't think that we should be sending out the message to young people that
it's OK to take drugs and drink alcohol," said Brand, who was joined on
Newsnight by the Conservative MP David Burrowes, the journalist Peter Hitchens
and Chip Somers, the chief executive of the charity Focus12 which helped Brand
overcome his addiction.
Hitchens, who said that more people would become drug users if drug use was
treated as a disease that should be sympathised with, asked: "Why is a comedian
being given a programme by the BBC to push an agenda about drugs?"
While Hitchens and Brand repeatedly clashed, with the comedian threatening at
one point to stand up and give the journalist a passionate kiss on the lips,
Burrowes defended the government's record, but said that it was worth listening
to the "inspirational" stories of former drug addicts.
Brand, who has been arrested around a dozen times for drug possession, told the
Commons home affairs select committee in April that his own drug addiction had
been caused by emotional and psychological difficulties and a spiritual malady.
It was more important to tackle those than treating addicts as criminals, he
told the committee, which was conducting an inquiry into drug policy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/aug/11/russell-brand-urges-less-methadone-clinics
