At present the effectiveness of drugs treatment is measured in terms of the numbers of people taken into treatment—irrespective of how ‘treatment’ is defined and the quality of the services offered—and the numbers of people retained in treatment for more than 12 weeks.

The new system of measurement would have the effect of putting more weight on improvements experienced by drug users themselves. Within the present drug strategy, cost-benefit analyses have tended to be conducted in terms of the strategy’s impact on crime and the associated benefits to the community rather than outcomes for the individual.

The evaluation of the Scottish drug court scheme, for example, explicitly excludes ‘any estimate for so-called “individual outcomes values” – the intrinsic value to the individual and those around him/her of achieving a more ordered and more personally rewarding life’. As the authors point out, this is equivalent to suggesting that drug-misusing individuals have zero value and that treatments are offered to them only because of their potential value to the rest of society, whatever the consequences to the individual.

By reference to an earlier observation in C Godfrey, D Stewart and M Gossop, ‘Economic analysis of costs and consequences of the treatment of drug misuse: 2-year outcome data from the National Treatment Outcome Research Study (NTORS)’, Addiction, 99, 2004.