POLICE WANT TO SUPPLY FREE HEROIN

Police Chiefs are proposing the effective de-criminalisation of heroin,
with plans to supply it free to eliminate dealers and associated crime.

Sir David Phillips, the president of the Association of Chief Police
Officers, will unveil proposals next month for the most radical change to
drugs policy so far. He will call for heroin to be prescribed to anyone who
wants it in an attempt to destroy the illegal trade and the UKP1 billion
cost of crime committed by addicts.

The drug will be dispensed - probably as a tablet or linctus - in official
premises staffed by police, social workers and medical personnel. It will
still be a crime to use or possess heroin elsewhere.

The scheme is based on a Swiss system which has resulted in a decline in
the heroin trade but has proven costly and has been blamed for attracting
first-time users.

Chief constables throughout the country have been consulted on the idea and
Sir David is meeting Andy Hayman, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police, to finalise his announcement this week.

Sir David, the chief constable of Kent, said: "The system has failed. We
have an out-of-control drugs industry and it is time to try a new approach."

A senior officer said: "If we provide free heroin to anyone who wants it,
then at a stroke we eliminate a multi-billion-pound criminal conspiracy. No
one would buy heroin if they can get it free."

Doctors cannot prescribe heroin to addicts without a Home Office licence.
Just 102 do and most of them prescribe to a handful of patients with
special medical needs.

Most addicts are instead prescribed methadone, a heroin substitute, which
they must take on the premises at chemists' shops and GPs' surgeries. The
cost of prescribing methadone is estimated at UKP100 million a year and
that would be saved if a significant number switched to heroin.

Dame Ruth Runciman, who chaired the Police Foundation into drugs which
recommended making possession of cannabis a non-arrestable offence, said
the proposals had not been properly thought through.

She said: "I support some increase in prescribing heroin by family doctors
but I think a scheme of this kind would cause many problems. It would be
difficult to decide on the spot whether someone should be prescribed heroin
and what dose to give them.

"I am also far from convinced that there would be a large drop in crime.
There is certainly some evidence linking drugs with crime but there are
also many other factors which cause crime, including social conditions."

Prescribing heroin was standard practice from the 1920s to 1960s and was
credited with keeping addict numbers down. In 1971, there were 500 addicts.
Now there are an estimated 500,000. Since 1971, medical opinion has
favoured weaning addicts off their dependency by using methadone.

There had been previous experiments in prescribing heroin. In 1989, a
system offering chronic addicts pharmaceutical heroin on the NHS began in
the North. The so-called Widnes experiment, under Dr John Marks, a
psychiatrist, ran for five years.

The clinic claimed there were no drug-related deaths or HIV infection, and
a significant improvement in health among the group of addicts. Police in
north Cheshire reported a 93-per-cent reduction in drug-related crime among
the addicts but in 1994, the experiment's funding was stopped.

Last year, Francis Wilkinson, the former chief constable of Gwent, called
for the reinstatement of prescription heroin. Heroin was first produced in
1874 by Alder Wright, a chemist at St Mary's Hospital, London, who wanted
to rid opium of its addictive qualities.

Heinrich Dreser, who was in charge of new drugs at Bayer, then a dye-making
firm, believed the drug could be effective in the treatment of respiratory
illnesses and registered it as "heroin" from the German word heroisch,
meaning heroic.

It was marketed as "Sulfonal, the reliable hypnotic" and was eventually
taken off the market because of its addictive qualities.