UK - Drug addicts in London get heroin prescribed by NHS

[HerrSchnaufer]

BBC News

4th July 2011 - By Ed Davey

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13944209

The whole article is worth a read, but key points which seemed most interesting to me are:

But the BBC has used Freedom of Information requests to all of London's primary care trusts to establish that heroin is already being prescribed across the city - and not just in medical trials.

In exceptional cases, doctors can already gain special approval from the Home Office to issue heroin to addicts.

In the past three years almost 120 addicts have been provided with heroin in this way in London and it was prescribed in 10 of the city's 32 boroughs.

^^ Just the fact that the BBC has gone to the effort of using Freedom of Information requests to establish this is interesting enough in itself.

It costs the NHS about £14,000 to maintain an addict on heroin for a year.

Supporters of heroin prescription say this is dwarfed by the cost of crime users might otherwise commit. Experts have estimated an addict spends £45,000-a-year on average on street heroin.

The BBC asked every NHS primary care trust in London to reveal how many of the addicts taking prescribed heroin became drug-free, compared to those taking methadone.

Almost all of the bodies claimed this was impossible because of the way the figures are recorded.

But Brent Shared Care Prescribing Team, which treats addicts in the boroughs of Brent, Westminster, Hammersmith, Barnet, Kensington and Chelsea, Ealing, Harrow, Camden and Islington, did reply fully.

In the last three years it prescribed 466 addicts with methadone. Six were discharged drug-free, a success rate of 1.2%.

'Focus on recovery'
Over the same period, 48 people were issued with heroin. Six kicked the habit - a 12.5% success rate.

NHS North West London, which presides over the team, refused to comment.

^^ Some rather interesting statistics coming from right within the UK which can hardly be disputed. I wonder how many of the other boroughs refused to comment because they have similar figures which might not sit comfortably with current government drug policy?

Of course there is opposition, which is covered in the article too. Give it a read.

 

[TheLostBoys]

Interesting read

 

[slimvictor]

Fascinating.
But I worry that this article will just incite the typical witch-hunt we have seen time and again.

 

[23536]

It costs the NHS about £14,000 to maintain an addict on heroin for a year.

ok that's a rip-off. That's twenty-three thousand US

 

[edgarshade]

It costs the NHS about £14,000 to maintain an addict on heroin for a year.

Is that just the cost of the diamorphine or the overall cost of the treatment? From what I understood from the BBC London radio discussion about it yesterday the treatment includes social re-integration.

 

[HerrSchnaufer]

Either way, it's considerably less than the £45,000 worth of theft, insurance claims, police time, court time and prison space that the UK tax payer is paying for.

In all honesty, I've only read the article, I'm not sure if that figure includes any kind of social reintegration, but I'm guessing so (diacetylmorphine isn't that expensive, it has to be administered under supervision several times a day, so I'm guessing this figure takes the supervising staffs wages into account etc. etc.).

 

[23536]

Experts have estimated an addict spends £45,000-a-year on average on street heroin.

25 bags a day by my calculations. The average addict.

 

[Newbierock]

45k a year? your telling me a homeless addict is finding more money to spend on heroin in one year than I make working 5/6 days every week?!

 

[ControlDenied]

is it just me or does this article trigger the fuck out of the junkjones? a nurse preparing a crystal-clear and clean syringe full of pharmaceutical heroin, administered three to four times a day????

 

[MemphisX3]

45k a year? your telling me a homeless addict is finding more money to spend on heroin in one year than I make working 5/6 days every week?!

easily. you have to consider their means of income. panhandling, theft, burglary etc.

 

[captainballs]

The BBC asked every NHS primary care trust in London to reveal how many of the addicts taking prescribed heroin became drug-free, compared to those taking methadone.

Wow - what a backward angle to attack this from. The disdain for heroin is on par with religious fever, so much so that an addict dying from withdrawals is seen as more righteous than one who is simply trying to maintain a normal life with a private medical problem. It is totally NOT about the money, apparently. It is about continuing to put a scarlet letter on people who use heroin. This angle is so thinly disguised. Why don't they just come out and say it: they would rather spend a comfortable middle class income on devastating a heroin addict by locking him or her amongst thieves and killers.

 

[phr]

There's at least one study out there that says an addict stabilized on heroin will use less, I believe even when taking into account purity differences, than a regular street addict. The dose was less than 1 gram a day, maybe around 600mg, on average.

When you know you have as much as you want and you can get it anytime, your use pattern changes. It's more akin to methadone maintenance than the up and down chases...

I don't think that number is just for the heroin.

 

[ControlDenied]

"When you know you have as much as you want and you can get it anytime, your use pattern changes."

its true. it also loses its glamour, you start to hate it more, and become more likely to quit, thusly.

props to London UK for helping lead the way [along with parts of Canada and the Netherlands ] to a humane treatment of drug addiction and rationality.

 

[brimz]

For the record out of the 300,000 Heroin addicts in the U.K
under 1000 get Diamophine

This is just propaganda Bollox
Ive been on Heroin 15 plus years and apart from one period of about 18 months when i was getting Methadone injectable 50ml concerntrate amps in the lATE 90s , i 've never been near getting a Diamorphine script .

Although i meet all the criteria set out in the Prescribing guidlines.

 

[edgarshade]

Wow - what a backward angle to attack this from. The disdain for heroin is on par with religious fever, so much so that an addict dying from withdrawals is seen as more righteous than one who is simply trying to maintain a normal life with a private medical problem. It is totally NOT about the money, apparently. It is about continuing to put a scarlet letter on people who use heroin. This angle is so thinly disguised. Why don't they just come out and say it: they would rather spend a comfortable middle class income on devastating a heroin addict by locking him or her amongst thieves and killers.

Well said!