Heroin prescription 'cuts costs' (BBC News)

[Anarcho-Socialist]

There are strong reasons to support the practice of prescribing heroin to drug misusers, researchers claim.

A University of Amsterdam team says the treatment is cost-effective, even though it is expensive. The British Medical Journal study found the cost to health services was offset by savings linked to crime reduction.

Supervised medical prescription of heroin - a class A drug in the UK -is controversial. UK experts said a range of treatments should be available.

Previous research has shown supervised medial prescription of heroin improves the physical and mental health, and ability to function normally in society, of users who cannot be successfully treated using just methadone - a synthetic narcotic used to treat heroin addiction.

More at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4607233.stm

[fedsron2us]

1. Controversial ?

Only in the eyes of the author of the BBC article. All that is proposed in by these academics is the introduction of a scheme not unlike the one that actually operated in Britain until the 1960's. Upto that time heroin addiction was regarded as a medical problem which was treated in part by prescribing controlled doses of the drug to registered addicts. It was only after pressure was applied by the US government that the UK criminalised its use. The result was a disastrous increase in drug abuse, crime and death by overdose. This is one of those topics where American influence on British public policy has been at its most malign. As a police 911 dispatcher so wisely said on one of the other DU boards, the only way to control drug use is to own the distribution network.