Sometimes, the old ways really were the best:
Pilot schemes starting in June will expand the number
of long-term addicts given injectable heroin if they fail to respond to
other treatments such as methadone.
Ministers have
been advised by drug treatment specialists that the introduction of
"heroin clinics" in Switzerland and Holland during the 1990s
significantly reduced drug-related crime and other social problems.
…..
In the 1970s, 20 per cent of heroin addicts who received NHS treatment
were given the Class A drug. This has fallen to less than 0.5 per cent.
Now I’m one of those extremists who think that the stuff should be legal anyway for two reasons. It’s no damn business of the Government what people put into their bodies, each of us should be free to go to hell and damnation in our own way. The second is that it is the very illegality that causes most of the problems.
Still, accepting that no politician is brave enough to actually say all of this (and it would also appear to be illegal under various UN things we have signed up to), the best solution would be to have de facto legalisation. Register as an addict and get it on prescription. Pharmaceutical heroin is so damn cheap, once you’ve taken the gangsters out of the numbers, that the NHS would actually make a profit on dispensing it at the normal prescription price. Now all we need is to write up the prescription forms for pot, cocaine, crack, meth, E and the rest. Problem solved.
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