HARDENED ADDICTS GIVEN FREE HEROIN IN SECRET NHS TRIAL

The Aim Is to Cut Drug-Related Crime

Supporters Say It Is Cost-Effective

Drug addicts are being given injections of heroin on the NHS under a
government-backed plan to deter them from comitting robbery and theft
to fund their habit.

Up to 150 addicts at three treatment centres in England will take
part in the trial, which until now has been kept secret. The centres
will report the results to ministers, police and doctors.

The addicts have been chosen because they have very serious addiction
problems. They receive the drug daily under the supervision of nurses
and doctors. The use of heroin by doctors is not illegal but they
require licences from the Home Office.

Two clinics are already operating. One is at the Maudsley Hospital,
South London, and a second is in Darlington, Co Durham. A third is
expected to open later in a trial that will run for several years.

Heroin has not been routinely prescribed for addicts since the 1960s,
when the "British system" was abandoned. Doctors were allowed to
issue prescriptions to addicts but the practice was abandoned after a
series of scandals in which half a dozen London doctors were overprescribing.

At present addicts are usually prescribed a synthetic substitute
called methadone, which addicts often say is not strong enough or
lacks the "rush" of heroin. Prescriptions are sold on the illicit
market and addicts revert to heroin.

Last month a report by Neil McKeganey, head of drug misuse at Glasgow
University, showed that fewer than 4 per cent of heroin addicts
managed to beat their habit with methadone.

Details of the new trial were revealed yesterday as one of the
country's top police drug-crime experts called for the prescription
of heroin to be more widely available for addicts.

Howard Roberts, the deputy chief constable of Nottinghamshire and
deputy head of the Association of Chief Police Officers drug group,
told a national police conference: "We take offenders out of crime
and treat their addiction in a closely monitored treatment programme.
Of course people getting people off drugs altogether must be the
objective but I do believe we have been left with the consequen-ces
of relatively uncontained addiction for too long."

Mr Roberts, who is a police representative on the Government's
Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, said he was not suggesting
the legalisation of heroin but a way of ending a crime wave that
ranges from burglary to murder.

He said that up to 60 per cent of crime in the UK could be
drug-fuelled. He acknowledged that treating addicts with heroin could
cost UKP 12,000, compared with UKP 3,000 using methadone, but said
that the sum was outweighed by the cost of crime committed to fund drug use.

Mr Roberts, who has the backing of other senior officers, said that
the benefits of using heroin were supported by research including
studies on heroin prescription in the Netherlands and Switzerland.
The research found that there were significant reductions in illicit
drug use among those receiving the treatment, and both the Swiss and
Dutch reported a drop in crime committed by the addicts. In
Switzerland most of the patients had no criminal convictions while in
treatment.

Martin Barnes, the chief executive of Drugscope, supported Mr
Roberts, and said that prescribing heroin could be the best route for
some drug users to escape their addiction. "There are positive net
gains not just to the individual drug user but within the community
generally," he said.

Action on Addiction, a research charity, is helping to oversee the
pilot scheme. Nicky Metrebian, a researcher for the charity who has
examined the Swiss and Dutch schemes, said: "There is evidence to
suggest that there is a potential role for the medicalised
prescribing of injectable opiates in supervised injecting clinics as
a last resort for hard-to-treat heroin addicts.

"Action on Addiction's scientific study will test whether this
treatment is effective in reducing illicit heroin use, improving
health and reducing criminal activity among a particular group of
hard-to-treat heroin users."