Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what programmes there are in prisons to provide support for prisoners with synthetic cannabis drug dependency.

In prison, patients presenting with problematic psychoactive substance use are assessed in the same way as other drug users and offered an appropriate range of psychosocial interventions.

In April 2018, NHS England and NHS Improvement published its updated service specification on ‘Integrated Substance Misuse Treatment Service in Prisons in England’. This is fully aligned to ‘Drug Misuse and Dependence: UK Guidelines on Clinical Management’, which sets out how clinicians should treat people with drug misuse and drug dependence problems.

The service specification describes a fully recovery orientated, integrated prison substance misuse treatment service, which covers traditional drugs of abuse, psychoactive substances (including synthetic cannabis), illicit abuse of prescribed and over the counter drugs and alcohol.

This improved substance misuse service offer is now being commissioned across all prisons and secures integration with mental health services so that growing numbers of people in prisons can access services to support their recovery and wellbeing.