ACMD report on "Diversion and illicit supply of medicines"

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) is pleased to enclose its report on Diversion and Illicit Supply of Medicines (referred to as ‘DISM’) for your consideration.

This report is in response to the Home Office’s commissioning letter of September 2013, in which the then Home Secretary requested the ACMD to explore the potential for medical and social harms arising from the illicit supply of medicines – predominantly controlled medicines.

We are grateful to the ACMD’s stakeholders, who provided presentations at the evidence gathering days as well as helpful written submissions (these are included in a separate attachment, alongside the main report on the ACMD website).

This report sets out to:

• explore the extent of DISM in the UK, to find out which drugs are being diverted;
• evaluate the extent of the medical and social harms of such diversion; and
• assess whether DISM displaces or replaces the use of known recreational drugs of abuse, such as heroin.

In recent years, DISM has become of increasing public concern across the globe, although the hard evidence for this constituting a major problem other than in the United States is hard to find.

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