Russell Newcombe, who has died aged 66 of lung most cancers, was an advocate of progressive insurance policies on illicit drug use and the primary individual to make use of the time period “hurt discount” to explain another path to the punitive targets of the “battle on medication”.
His status as a number one researcher within the discipline led Russell to be engaged by the Residence Workplace to review drug-using populations, and he additionally lectured at police coaching schools, ran programs for medication employees, collaborated with progressive policymakers overseas, and lent his energies to drug consumer organisations and anti-prohibition campaigners.
Russell’s experience at looking for typically ignored official information and utilizing it in incisive and authoritative reviews demanded lengthy working hours, for which he typically had recourse to synthetic stimulants. Understanding the experiences of drug customers was central to his apply, and he experimented extensively with psychedelics and different compounds. He felt an ethical obligation to be open about his drug use and rejected the stigma hooked up to it.
Russell was born in Shrewsbury to Invoice, a storage supervisor, and his spouse, Vera (nee Davies), a lodge prepare dinner. After attending the Wakeman faculty in Shrewsbury he went to Sussex College (1976-79) for a social science diploma, adopted by a PhD on the College of Kent (1979-83).
After two years as a analysis assistant at Chelsea Faculty in London, faculty insurance policies on smoking, he moved in 1985 to Liverpool, the place a disaster of injecting drug use was being compounded by the Aids pandemic.
In Liverpool he was for 2 years a analysis affiliate on the misuse of medication challenge on the College of Liverpool, and it was in that job that he made the primary use in print of the time period “hurt discount” – in a January 1987 concern of Druglink journal. After a yr as a analysis supervisor on South Sefton district well being authority’s drug training analysis challenge he turned director of the medication and HIV monitoring unit at Mersey regional well being authority (1988-91).
Transferring on to take up a analysis fellowship with the alcohol, medication and crime challenge on the College of Manchester, in 1993 he arrange his personal medication analysis bureau, 3D, advising, amongst different issues, on medication use related to the rise of the rave scene. From 1998 to 2010 he was first a senior lecturer within the faculty of psychology and pure sciences at Liverpool John Moores College after which senior researcher at Lifeline publishers, specialising in writing reviews on drug associated subjects, together with a research of 100 purchasers of the Manchester needle alternate programme and interviews with homeless individuals who use medication.
In 2010 he resurrected his 3D consultancy, producing additional reviews, coaching well being professionals and placing his expertise to make use of as a advisor for movie and TV producers who wanted recommendation on the right way to depict drug use precisely. Collectively together with his second spouse, Cher (nee White), a Canadian medication knowledgeable whom he married in 2012, he labored with Benedict Cumberbatch on his Bafta-winning efficiency within the TV mini-series Patrick Melrose (2018), about an higher class Englishman attempting to take care of alcoholism and heroin habit.
Two weeks earlier than Russell’s loss of life, the UN Fee on Narcotic Medication lastly handed a decision accepting the time period “hurt discount” after a long time of resistance: it was a becoming tribute to his journey from the margins of drug coverage to mainstream recognition.
He’s survived by Cher, by two kids, Jack and Ella, from his first marriage to Jane (nee Gregory), which resulted in divorce, and 4 grandchildren, Hayley, Zak, Maisie and Alfie.
