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On 7 April 2010, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee published a report examining the government’s drug strategy as well as drug-related crime, drug treatment and reintegration on the basis of evidence from the Home Office and the National Treatment Agency,
The committee finds that £1.2 billion a year is spent on measures aimed at tackling problem drug use, yet it is not know what the overall effect of this spending is. Furthermore, around one-quarter of problem drug users are hard-core offenders who resist measures to reduce their offending or ‘drop out’ of drug treatment.
Problem drug users typically relapse several times into further drug use and offending during and after drug treatment. Despite local authorities spending £30 million on housing support for problem drug users in 2008–09, up to 100,000 drug users in England continue to experience housing problems.
One of the major problems highlighted in the report is insufficient government investment in good quality, longitudinal research into some areas of the strategy’s activities, most notably in establishing the evidence base on what is effective in supporting people to reintegrate into society after they have recovered from a drug problem.