Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Give addicts heroin?

I heard this first on Radio 4, apparently the Deputy Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire, Howard Roberts says we should prescribe drug addicts heroin. The thinking is they would then no longer need to commit crime to fund their habit. You can read the BBC's article here.

I agree. However I would go a little further. I would prescribe heroin to anyone who could show they were an addict as soon as possible. This would also have the effect of cutting drug dealers income stream as well as reducing the need for crime.

Whilst drug addicts are going for their regular fix, you also have the opportunity to try and get them off heroin and rehabilitated which is also a good thing.

In short, we could reduce crime, make life harder for drug dealers, have regular contact with addicts so enabling us to rehabilitate some and make sure doses are clean and correct (saving on drug overdoses and other problems with badly cut heroin).

Looks like a win win situation to me.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well it sounds like a massive win situation to me.

As it did the previous time I heard someone dare suggest it.

The question then is: Where has all this "War on Drugs" malarkey come from, and why do our politicians insist on ramming it down our throats?

I did hear one suggestion that the original impetus for a "War on Drugs" was created because too many of the soldiers in the trenches [ie during WWI] were on heroin and therefore not motivated to follow the orders of their officers.

It is notable that there have been persistant stories that the USAF give their pilots amphetamines. I guess if it helps them kill people then they can get a temporary exemption from the "War on Drugs".

Benedict White said...

Timothy, the whole war on anything thing is frequently a cover for being "hardline" regardless of whether or not it achieves anything.

It is like the rather vacuous statement that "tough times need tough measures". They don't they need clever measures.

On the war on drugs issue I understood it to come from some American temperence type fool, who managed via the UN to get it everywhere.

Anonymous said...

Here here! I'm an addict, I know loads of addicts, we all say the same thing. Nobody in Government EVER listens to us. If you're interested in the subject, come by my blog http://gledwood.tripod.com/blog.