Nursing Chief:

GIVE ADDICTS FREE HEROIN TO STOP THEM TURNING TO CRIME

Drug addicts should be prescribed free heroin on the NHS, a nursing
leader has claimed.

Dr Peter Carter, head of the Royal College of Nursing, also believes
surgeries should set aside so-called 'shoot-up' galleries - rooms
laid out with needles so users can inject in private.

He said making the Class A drug available would reduce crime as
addicts would not need to steal to fund their habit.

Dr Carter added that such a service could be available on the NHS
'within a few years'.

The NHS is piloting a scheme to give addicts free diamorphine - the
medical name for heroin - in clinics in Brighton, Darlington and London.

Results of the trial will be published later this year - but early
results suggest both crime and addiction rates have fallen dramatically.

Dr Carter said: 'I do believe in heroin prescribing. The fact is
heroin is very addictive.

'People who are addicted so often resort to crime, to steal to buy the heroin.

'If you are going to get people off heroin then in the initial stages
we have to have proper heroin prescribing services.

'Critics say you are encouraging drug addiction but the reality is
that these people are addicts and they are going to do it anyway.'

Dr Carter, who was speaking at the annual RCN congress, added that
more research was needed into the benefits of 'drug consumption
rooms' - in surgeries or hospitals - laid out with clean needles.

'Evidence shows that by letting them inject privately they don't do
it in school playgrounds or stairwells,' he said.

But critics questioned the idea of spending valuable NHS funds on
free heroin at a time when members of the public were denied
life-saving treatment.

Matthew Elliott, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: 'It would be
madness for the NHS to give out free heroin given that it currently
struggles to provide life-saving and life-prolonging drugs for cancer
patients. There is no reason why taxpayers should fund someone's
recreational drug habit.

'This would take us into the absurd situation of taxpayers funding
police campaigns against heroin and the NHS paying for people to take
more of it.'

David Green, director of the Civitas think-tank, said: 'I'm
completely against this idea. The solution is to get people off the
addiction, to get them off heroin completely.

'Money should be spent on therapy approaches, rather than keeping
users on drugs. One idea being piloted at the moment is using
so-called "opioid antagonists" - drugs which make people sick if they
take heroin.

'There is a pilot currently under way in North Yorkshire and it takes
five days or so for users to get off heroin.'

There are around 273,000 heroin addicts in the UK, according to Home
Office estimates.

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.