THE Record's Annie Brown gives her views on why the public are just as guilty for society's methadone ills.
THE Government have ordered an audit into the £36million methadone cover-up. Three decades of of deaths and long-term addiction and now we are finally to be told the truth about the impact of methadone on Scotland. Out of 584 drug deaths in Scotland last year, a saddening 274 were linked to methadone. A legally dispensed drug killed hundreds of Scots, yet where was the outcry, where was the public anger?
Why did the Government not do an audit decades ago?
Millions was spent on dishing out a drug to thousands of Scots – and there was no real national record of what was being taken, the dosage, the deaths and whether it had any impact on addiction. Successive governments knew that when they poked at the nasty little methadone problem, the stench would be overwhelming. This is a story of short-termism, apathy and concealing the truth of what has been a strategic blunder. In every war there are profiteers, and the war against addiction is no different.
Chemists, doctors and drug companies got fat as the addicts got skinny.
And the reason it happened was because we didn’t care.
Heroin addicts aren’t people, they are junkies. Junkies nick our car stereo or pester us for cash. They are unsightly, unkempt. They have rotten teeth, bad skin and they would hawk themselves for a tenner bag. They are spongers and wasters and we recoil when we see them queueing in our local chemist for their little green fix.
Yet, I remember 15 years ago interviewing a senior police officer whose daughter was a heroin addict. I watched this big, broken man weep as he admitted he wished his daughter dead, rather than have her sell herself for drugs at the local docks.
If there was no methadone available it'd be a thousand junkies dead from street drugs instead of 274 from methadone probably mixed with other shit. Never mind the crime, burden on public health system from infections, poverty and other problems from addiction to street drugs.
