My friend and colleague David Turner, who has died aged 64 of cancer, was one of the most significant figures in UK and European drug policy over the past 50 years. David was secretary to the UK government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) when it published its Treatment and Rehabilitation report in 1982 a document generally accepted to have kickstarted the UK's drug treatment network and his hand was clearly discernible in most of its recommendations. He went on to become a huge influence internationally, working with a number of bodies in Europe. In his activity with these various organisations David was a powerful and compassionate presence, usually working quietly in the background. Much of his work attracted no byline, but he seemed genuinely to have no interest in such things.
One of his abiding beliefs was that "a war on drugs must, inevitably, become a war on drug users" and he was a strong advocate in the early 1980s of harm-reduction policies, which he argued would not only reduce the damage that drug users might do to themselves, but would cut down on the harm they might do to others. When the government introduced its community care legislation in the early 1980s and refused to ringfence local authority funding for drug use, David campaigned publicly to reverse the decision, much to the government's embarrassment and to his own cost. He was by then head of the Standing Conference on Drug Abuse (Scoda), and there can be little doubt that his outspoken stance on ringfencing subsequently cost him his job there.
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