The eight-hour Beatles documentary Get Back has swept the field at today’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards, winning all five categories it was nominated in. The wins include best documentary and best direction for Sir Peter Jackson, who spent close to four years working on the project.
Get Back also picked up wins for picture editing, sound mixing and sound editing at the ceremony, held two days before the main Emmy Awards on Wednesday.
For outstanding documentary, Get Back was up against Netflix’s The Andy Warhol Diaries and jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, HBO’s 100 Foot Wave, and Showtime’s We Need To Talk About Cosby.
For outstanding direction of a documentary/nonfiction programme, Jackson triumphed over Andrew Rossi for The Andy Warhol Diaries; Judd Apatow for George Carlin’s American Dream, Amy Poehler for Lucy And Desi; Ian Denyer for Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy, and W Kamau Bell for We Need To Talk About Cosby.
The Beatles in the studio, in a scene from Peter Jackson’s documentary Get Back
Creating a pilot programme to give meth addicts a substitute stimulant – or the drug itself – is one of the proposals in a report published today by the Helen Clark Foundation in partnership with the NZ Drug Foundation.
The substitute stimulant would be “provided in tightly controlled circumstances to people who have become addicted and have struggled to achieve abstinence, despite having been through two rounds of treatment”.
The proposal, the report’s authors write, is “modelled on highly effective and well-evidenced experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand with opioid substitution treatment, with heroin-assisted treatment in Switzerland and other places, as well as recent experiences in Canada, where drugs such as amphetamines and opioids have been provided on prescription to dependent users”.
Where substitutes are found to be ineffective, methamphetamine itself could be used in the treatment programme, they suggest.
The report, ‘Minimising the harms from methamphetamine‘, also recommends rolling out the Northland-based meth treatment and harm reduction programme Te Ara Oranga to the rest of the country. Te Ara Oranga is designed to address all aspects of the harms caused by meth, using partnerships between police and the health department, iwi, NGOs and other service providers, and has been found to reduce re-offending by 34% and provide a return of $3–$7 on each dollar invested.
The new report says there is a severe need for more funding for meth addiction in New Zealand. (Photo: Getty Images)
Other recommendations include a significant increase in funding for addiction treatment; the implementation of the findings of the government inquiry into mental health and addiction which emphasised the importance of providing interventions earlier; ensuring services are available in the areas with highest demand, such as small towns in the Bay of Plenty, Northland and Hawkes Bay; providing more culturally appropriate support programmes for Māori; and providing more low-barrier treatment services, such as at-home detox and treatment options that do not require abstinence as a condition of entry.
Chris Wilkins, leader of the drug research team at Shore & Whāriki Research Centre, Massey University, welcomed the report and endorsed the authors’ support for the Te Ara Oranga programme.
“It was great to see the emphasis on the need for services to be local, including in small towns and rural areas,” he said. “Also, I agree there’s a need to provide a range intensity of treatment services also with Māori approaches, including supporting peer to peer support. There is opportunity to be innovative and adaptable with services to attract more people into treatment and help-seeking, and use limited resources wisely.”
However he urged caution in adopting a stimulant replacement programme for meth addiction. “The evidence of effectiveness has been mixed and there are risks with stimulant maintenance including mental health and addiction, physical health of users, and impact on others,” he said, noting there are reasons to believe that meth replacement differs from opioid substitution in ways that could significantly affect the outcome.
The ‘Minimising the harms from methamphetamine’ report was authored by Philippa Yasbek, Kali Mercier, Dr Hinemoa Elder MNZM, Dr Rose Crossin and Prof. Michael Baker MNZM.
