England Says: Give Heroin to Addicts

From BBC:

Heroin should be prescribed to drug addicts to curb crime, the deputy chief constable of Nottinghamshire has said at a drugs conference.

Howard Roberts told an Association of Chief Police Officers' conference in Manchester the idea should be assessed.

He said the treatment would cost £12,000 a year per addict but added that drug users steal property valued at an average of £45,000 a year.

The idea is being piloted in London, the South East and North of England.

'Terrible consequences'

"At the moment across the country we see levels of burglary, robbery and murder being committed by drug-fuelled addicts who are doing so in order to get the money to buy the drugs," Mr Roberts told the conference.

"One of the things I have found is that as a treatment it has been highly effective in actually helping to reduce crime.

"We've seen good levels of falls in drug-related acquisitive crime.

"However, there is still a considerable problem and what I am suggesting is that we need to explore, as part of a treatment programme, the prescribing of heroin to addicts in order to take them out of the illegal market."

He added: "Of course, getting people off drugs altogether must be the objective.

"But I do believe that we have lived with the terrible consequences of relatively uncontained addiction for far too long.

"If we are to make a greater impact we need to fundamentally address the method of operation of the criminal market-place for heroin."

Improve treatment

The manager of a Nottinghamshire-based support service for families of drug users supported the police chief's call.

"I'm delighted that police are taking drug treatment options more seriously and have been doing so over the last few years," said Nina Dauban, manager of Mansfield-based Hetty's.

"In the past police have been forced to go down the enforcement and criminal justice route that doesn't always solve the problem.

"There is a lot of criminality around drugs, reducing the level of criminality is really important in improving treatment for addicts.

"All tribute to him saying this. It is typical of Nottinghamshire Police not to be frightened to speak about their convictions.

"We're not here to win a popularity contest - we're out to improve services for drug users."

Martin Barnes, chief executive of drugs charity DrugScope, said: "There is compelling evidence that heroin prescribing, although more expensive than some forms of drug treatment, is cost-effective in reducing drug-related crime and other costs to communities."

Nicola Metrebian, from the charity Action on Addiction, said they were doing research which would "compare the effectiveness of injectable methadone and injectable heroin to oral methadone" for a group of hard to treat heroin users.

In the Department of Health pilots, 300 to 400 drug users receive heroin for their addiction.

Similar schemes in Holland and Switzerland reported some users turning away from crime.

Source

And about time too.

It would need careful control, and active support for addicts trying to kick. But it beats all the alternatives.

Seems a good idea, if not a new one. I've nothing against people choosing to intoxicate themselves. A large proportion of the destructive problems a drug user faces are due to the cost and criminal nature of their habit. Might be possible to get the cost down by buying directly from the Afghan farmer.

There always seems to be a push against the use of drugs, even where it's an overall positive thing. They're trying to make a cannabis pill which will unlock all the medical goodness that people are crying out for. The problem is that from day one it was clear that reducing the high also made the medication inferior in every way. Even if the heroin plan went ahead there'd be huge political pressure to add some sort of obstacle which stopped there being wide adoption.

Also, I gather that Afghan farmers are returning to the bosom of the Taliban, partly because the NATO forces are refusing to let the farmers grow their major cash crop. Maybe buying the opium from them and providing it for addicts here would kill two birds with one stone.

These were personal comments and in no way reflect policy.

Pfft, they should come to the US and learn about the cost-effective solutions we use here. Not only do our ways of dealing with the problem cause us to lose more in drug-related theft but they have the added bonus in costing us extra in incarceration fees. I think it's pretty clear that limiting the supply of drugs and jailing the users is the best possible solution. Stupid brits.

I suggest an alternative strategy that combines the best of both worlds. We jail all the users and then give them herion.

Oh! Wait... we're already doing that.

Nevermind.

As far as I've heard, 'Junkie Clinics' have been a big success in places like Scotland and Sweden.

they do it lots of places in europe and have for years. it works well.

I would support some form of decriminalisation such as maintaining a ban on heroin trafficking while making it legal for any heroin user to obtain heroin from special clinics. It would have the following effects.

1. Removing the need for users to steal in order to fund their habit.
2. Reducing the likelihood of death by overdose.
3. Making it easier for users to seek help in kicking their habit.

If it heavily regulated and used as a system to slowly get the people off the drug and turn them away from a life of crime then i think its a good idea , but as a civil servant i can only see this going badly wrong

As opposed to the way things have been, which works so perfectly?

It's also a good way of taking the herion trade out the hands of scum who use it to finance other horrible things like people trafficking.

I just love that this is being proposed by the Sheriff of Nottingham.

+1.

It's pretty hard to make it work, we tried building save places for heroin addicts to take their drugs, basically just big rooms where they could get fresh needles and do their drugs in a save environment.

It utterly failed, it was impossible to keep the junkies under control and pretty much every such "save haven" ended up as a place where the walls were literally covered in all kinds of vileness including blood, employees were threatened and robbed regularly and they couldn't find anyone to man or clean them.

We still have arrangements that supply heroine users with a steady supply of heroine but the only way to apply for these is to either prove your weening of slowly or that you're someone who's so far gone that they'll never be heroine free for the rest of their life.
Most addicts feel it's not worth the hassle of applying and the "save haven's" have already been proven to be wasted efforts on repeated attempts.

Interesting point. How about we simply provide users with heroin, clean needles etc on prescription. In other words, users could pick the prescription up at the chemist and then go and take the drug at home or whereever.

Ok, this may not be ideal but it would still enable users to obtain heroin cheaply thus removing their motivation for committing robberies etc.

The likelihood of overdose would still be reduced as overdose tends to be caused because the actual amount of heroin in a fix of street grade drug varies. Hence the user never knows how much they are taking.

Ok I am sure that some people would worry that prescription heroin would end up being cut and sold on the streets, but its not clear why anyone would want to pay overinflated street prices for heroin when they can get it on prescription.

Obviously, since this scenario involves users taking heroin in a non safe environment, if any of them were to overdose, medical help would not be at hand but there would still be less deaths due to overdose than we currently get because the heroin content of each prescription would be constant and known.

I wonder if it would be more feasable to just give them the drugs and let them go wherever.

Rather than trying to get the people off the drugs try and under cut the dealers to make it impossible to make a profit selling. I am sure you guys in england impound enough drugs that you could give it away for free, get the junkies coming to you and eventualy (in theory anyhow) The dealers will go out of business.

There's gotta be at least one chav in his jurisdiction that calls himself "Robin Hoodie"

Good point!

I really don't think you could ever overcome the anti-drug instinct in politics. You'd have to come close to a "just hand it out" policy to really undercut the drug dealers. But no system is perfect, there would be the occasional death and cases of re-selling. People would rather have a dozen people die in grotty bedsits via illegal drugs then one high profile death from something legally obtained.

Thats what I was talking about. You sieze the drug shipments coming into the country, then give them away for free. Make selling illegal but without jail time. That way you can sieze dealers drugs also. the last part is harrassment because they are going to have to comeup with the cash to pay back the guy they bought the drugs from. Eventually it will be too much of a hastle to deal and the system (theoretically) should crumble. Not to mention that by cutting off the supply of cash to places like columbia and mexico should go a long way towards helping those countries stabilize.

As long as the British Govenment stays focused on using this to only reduce property crimes it should work.
Once the agenda of the program strays from that , it's fucked. The only thing this proposal can have any affect on is the affordability of heroin, which is reason for the crimes in the first place.
It's great if it enables a number of addicts to seek treatment but that will be a secondary effect.

Over in Vancouver the city council set up a safe injection site to decrease the deaths resulting from overdoses. Worked like a charm. Unfortunately various interest groups have slamed the site because it has done nothing to reduce crime, which they weren't intended to do anyways.

Something else....
Wasn't heroin perscription tried already in England at one point? If so, why did it stop?

Ahem, you forgot to mention that we prefer to overcrowd our prison system with drug offenders so that those who commit "real" crimes such as rape, murder, etc. get shorter stays due to said overcrowding. Bonus.

I watched something on The History Channel not too long ago and I was totally ignorant to the fact that our first drug laws were made to punish minorities. Man, I cannot believe that our country has the audacity to call others "evil" when we wrote the fucking book on it.