Pubdate: Thu, 29 Apr 2010
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Copyright: 2010 Associated Newspapers Ltd
Contact:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/108
Author: Sophie Borland
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?131 (Heroin Maintenance)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Supervised Injection Sites)

Nursing Chief:

GIVE ADDICTS FREE HEROIN TO STOP THEM TURNING TO CRIME

Drug addicts should be prescribed free heroin on the NHS, a nursing 
leader has claimed.

Dr Peter Carter, head of the Royal College of Nursing, also believes 
surgeries should set aside so-called 'shoot-up' galleries - rooms 
laid out with needles so users can inject in private.

He said making the Class A drug available would reduce crime as 
addicts would not need to steal to fund their habit.

Dr Carter added that such a service could be available on the NHS 
'within a few years'.

The NHS is piloting a scheme to give addicts free diamorphine - the 
medical name for heroin - in clinics in Brighton, Darlington and London.

Results of the trial will be published later this year - but early 
results suggest both crime and addiction rates have fallen dramatically.

Dr Carter said: 'I do believe in heroin prescribing. The fact is 
heroin is very addictive.

'People who are addicted so often resort to crime, to steal to buy the heroin.

'If you are going to get people off heroin then in the initial stages 
we have to have proper heroin prescribing services.

'Critics say you are encouraging drug addiction but the reality is 
that these people are addicts and they are going to do it anyway.'

Dr Carter, who was speaking at the annual RCN congress, added that 
more research was needed into the benefits of 'drug consumption 
rooms' - in surgeries or hospitals - laid out with clean needles.

'Evidence shows that by letting them inject privately they don't do 
it in school playgrounds or stairwells,' he said.

But critics questioned the idea of spending valuable NHS funds on 
free heroin at a time when members of the public were denied 
life-saving treatment.

Matthew Elliott, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: 'It would be 
madness for the NHS to give out free heroin given that it currently 
struggles to provide life-saving and life-prolonging drugs for cancer 
patients. There is no reason why taxpayers should fund someone's 
recreational drug habit.

'This would take us into the absurd situation of taxpayers funding 
police campaigns against heroin and the NHS paying for people to take 
more of it.'

David Green, director of the Civitas think-tank, said: 'I'm 
completely against this idea. The solution is to get people off the 
addiction, to get them off heroin completely.

'Money should be spent on therapy approaches, rather than keeping 
users on drugs. One idea being piloted at the moment is using 
so-called "opioid antagonists" - drugs which make people sick if they 
take heroin.

'There is a pilot currently under way in North Yorkshire and it takes 
five days or so for users to get off heroin.'

There are around 273,000 heroin addicts in the UK, according to Home 
Office estimates.

Around half of users are treated with methadone - a heroin substitute 
which aims to gradually wean them off the drug.

But medical experts have warned it does not work because users are 
prone to missing their GP appointments to collect the drug. When they 
start suffering from withdrawal symptoms they go back out on to the 
street to buy heroin - often stealing to pay for it.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake