'PAY FEMALE ADDICTS NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN'

A leading academic has provoked controversy by calling for female drug
addicts to be paid to take contraception to stop them having children.

Neil McKeganey, a professor of drug misuse research at Glasgow University,
said that the move would greatly reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies
among drug abusers and stop much child abuse.

Prof Mckeganey: Drastic Action Is Needed

Prof McKeganey also said that drug addicts who were already parents should
be given a year to give up the habit or face the prospect of having their
children taken from them and put up for adoption.

He said that both initiatives would help tackle the "crisis" of neglect
experienced by hundreds of thousands of children with drug-addicted parents.

However, critics claimed that the proposal is ill-thought out, would lead
to "social engineering on a massive scale", and could lead to enforced
sterilisation of other problem groups in society.

Prof McKeganey said he had made his proposal after interviewing 1,000 drug
addicts and discovering that many children were not being fed or clothed
properly. "We now have such a crisis that we ought to give active
consideration to paying female drug users to take long-term contraception,"
he said.

"The situation is so far beyond our capacity that we need to look at ways
of reducing the likelihood of female drug users becoming pregnant. It does
look as if, in many instances, female drug users are becoming pregnant
because of the chaos of their lifestyles."

He said that in parts of America, female drug users were given government
cash to take long-term contraception.

Prof McKeganey controversially added that drug addicts who were already
parents should be given a year to get off drugs or lose their children to
adoptive parents. He said that many children of addicted parents were being
looked after by grandparents or local authorities.

The professor estimates that there are about 60,000 children in Scotland
with drug-addicted parents and all needed significant support through to
their teenage years. Nationally, that would mean there were more than
600,000 children with drug-addicted parents.

His research has found that some children had woken up to find their
parents dead from an overdose, while others had had their Christmas
presents sold to pay for drugs.

The research also suggested that more than 60 per cent of drug-addicted
mothers and 85 per cent of fathers no longer looked after their children.

Prof McKeganey is due to give a lecture on the topic today to health
professionals.

Last night, the Roman Catholic Church condemned his proposals, saying that
they would breach people's human rights. Peter Kearney, the church's
spokesman, said: "If you are going to effectively sterilise drug-addicted
women, why stop there? Why not sterilise alcoholics?

"There must be as many women with chronic alcohol problems as there are
women with drug problems. This is social engineering on a massive scale and
it's completely unacceptable."

Frank Warburton, the director of services at DrugScope, a Government-funded
body that distributes advice to help people to quit drugs, also criticised
the proposal.

"It is true that a large number of children in Britain have drug-dependent
parents. The estimates we have suggest 250,000 to 300,000," he said. "This
proposal, however, strikes me as wholly disproportionate to the problem. It
would create a very controlling and punitive state that would interfere in
peoples' lives."

However, Prof McKeganey's views won partial support from David Hinchliffe,
the Labour MP for Wakefield, who chairs the House of Commons Health Select
Committee.

"I know a lot of people will resist this because of fears of eugenics and
social control, but the problem of addict parents is a huge one. Before I
became an MP, I worked in local authority social care and more than once I
have had to take into care a newborn baby because the mother just couldn't
cope.

"The problems of children growing up with addicts is immense and many end
up in care or neglected.

"We would have to give careful thought before going down this path of
giving them money to take contraception, but it is an interesting idea."