DRUG NEEDLES PLEA

A doctor running the country's first practice specialising in drug misuse
today called for more needle exchanges on Teesside.

Dr Ian Guy, who runs Teesside's ground-breaking Fulcrum Medical Practice,
spoke out as a new report called for the introduction of 'shooting
galleries', where heroin addicts can safely inject themselves.

Crime-reduction charity, the National Association for the Care and
Resettlement of Offenders, said the move would tackle the issue of users
injecting in public and scattering needles, as well as making it safer for
themselves.

Dr Guy previously sparked controversy when he suggested heroin should be
prescribed to addicts under strict controls.

And today the expert, who runs practices in central Middlesbrough,
Grangetown and Stockton, said more needle exchange schemes first needed to
be put in place.

"We have taken the view in favour of supervised self-injection of
prescribed heroin by a patient," he said. "What clearly is important is we
increase the availability of clean needles and make sure people who use
heroin can dispose of them safely.

"That is the thing we have to put right first."

Home Secretary David Blunkett last year rejected the idea of the centres,
even though a cross-party MP group suggested they should be considered as a
tool in the war on drugs.

Tina Williams, from Stockton group Parents Against Narcotics In the
Community, said she would back the scheme.

"It is like any other illness. You prescribe what is right for them but
then you need to look at how to do this safely," she said.

"You need to have safe places for people to inject and you need to have
somewhere safe to dispose of needles.

"There are homeless people out there injecting on the streets and if people
became more aware of that, they would be more accepting of these places."

The report, called Drugs and Crime: From Warfare to Welfare, also calls for
the dance drug ecstasy to be downgraded from class A to class B.

It said that in the UK 75pc of cash to tackle drugs went on policing,
courts, prisons, Customs and other enforcement.

Author Dr Marcus Roberts said: "A minority of hard drug users are
responsible for a lot of crime.

"Whether it is the teenager experimenting with cannabis or the heroin
addict committing burglary to get money for drugs, one thing we know is
that these problems are not going to be sorted out by the police, courts,
Customs and prisons alone.

"We need to provide drug addicts with help and support and to look at the
social and personal problems that often lie behind the most damaging kinds
of drug use."