- Doctors are calling for ‘heroin assisted treatment’ in supervised clinics
- They say it will prevent users taking contaminated drugs from dealers
- Rooms would also provide clean injecting equipment and medical care
- But critics accused doctors of enabling addicts to fuel their habits
Sophie Borland Health Editor For The Daily Mail
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Drug addicts should be prescribed free heroin on the NHS, leading doctors have urged.
They have also voted to be allowed to supervise users in specially designated ‘shoot-up’ galleries in towns and cities where dependency is high.
The British Medical Association passed the controversial motion claiming it would help reduce crime, prevent the spread of HIV and ensure addicts did not overdose.
They will now lobby the Government to provide ‘heroin assisted treatment’ and ‘supervised consumption rooms’, where doctors would prescribe the drug and be on hand to help.
But campaigners said the move ‘defied belief’ and accused doctors of enabling addicts to fuel their habits.
Doctors at the British Medical Association say prescribing heroin would allow addicts to use it in a safe environment, giving them a better chance of coming off the drug safely
Dr Iain Kennedy, chair of the BMA’s Public Health Medicine Committee said: ‘The idea is that drug users can be given the appropriate opiate in a clean and safe manner.
‘The doctors would prescribe the drug and it would be dispensed for them to use.
‘We are not talking about doctors injecting heroin into patients.
‘We are acting as a physician – in the same way a physician would prescribe methadone, which is actually more addictive than heroin.
‘It is medicinal heroin, so it is clean and users do not face the risk of taking a contaminated drug, like they would if they bought it on the street.
‘The rooms would also provide clean injecting equipment.
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Addressing the BMA’s annual conference in Belfast, he added: ‘These are not places that just anybody can go to.
‘They are for people that may lead particularly chaotic lives and otherwise inject in public places, such as homeless people.
‘They are for people who are already enrolled in drug treatment programmes. It’ s a very small number of people.
‘The consumption rooms are not needed in every town and city in the country. They are an adjunct to existing treatment.
‘It makes it easier for users to get off the drugs and reduces harm to the individual and society.
‘It treats the drug addiction as a health problem, rather than a criminal problem.’
Dr Kennedy, a consultant specialising in public health in Glasgow, claimed similar schemes were running in Vancouver, Canada, and had proved highly successful.
And recently other medical leaders have called for the UK to follow suit including Peter Carter, former head of the Royal College of Nursing, who urged the NHS in 2010 to provide ‘proper heroin prescribing services.’
Supervised heroin clinics would reduce crime and be less harmful to society, Dr Iain Kennedy, chair of the BMA’s Public Health Medicine Committee said
But Mary Brett, drugs campaigner and chair of the charity Cannabis Skunk Sense said: ‘They are enabling people to take heroin.
‘Instead of getting them off the drug, they’re just enabling them to take more and more.
‘Would you do the same for an alcoholic?
‘It defies belief. The right thing to do would be to get them off heroin, you could do this by abstinence or methadone.
‘They’re not facing up to the fact that people need to get off the drugs.’
Currently heroin users are prescribed methadone on the NHS, at a steadily reduced level to help them kick the habit while reducing withdrawal symptoms.
But experts say this is even more addictive than heroin and results in patients staying on the drug for years without getting better.
Figures from Public Health England show there are around 262,000 heroin users in the UK and numbers have dropped since the 1990s.
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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