Posted on 12/08/2001 5:29:23 PM PST by Pokey78
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 £1 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 £100 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.
Pistols Banned in Britain
By Randy Stearns ABCNEWS.com Sept. 30 — In the biggest surrender of private property in Britain since the late Middle Ages, Britons today handed over thousands of handguns in the hours before a new firearms bill took effect at midnight.
Spurred by last year’s massacre of 16 schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland, the government has made possession of any handgun larger than a .22 caliber a crime punishable by 10 years in jail and fines of as much as $7,500.
Scotland Yard recently mailed more than 9,000 letters reminding London gun owners and dealers of the impending deadline. The Home Office warned those who hadn’t yet complied that they could miss out on compensation of more than $200 per gun.
Britain has always been a relatively gun-free society, and the new rules were intended to keep it that way. Government officials hailed what they describe as among the toughest firearms rules in the world.
Some politicians predict even tougher restrictions lie ahead.
“Parliament wanted an end to the importation of American handgun culture,” Conservative Minister David Mellor told ABCNEWS’ Nathan Thomas. “If a small number of people continue to flout the will of Parliament by moving off into other weapons, the Parliament will have to revisit the matter.”
Why did they ban handguns?
If this logic is to be followed they should hand out free guns.
Heroin doesn't cause crime,the criminals do,just as guns don't cause crime,it's the criminals that do.
Of course, if you think nothing is wrong with half a million people on the dole shooting up and being high, then there's no argument. Sort of like SOMA in brave new world. Keeps the betas from revolting...
George Soros to the rescue with clean needles, I trust.
Now, on the other hand, the gun owner, or prospective owner, usually falls under one of two categories.
First, there's the popular view of the criminal, survivalist, or gun-runner for the IRA. Not too threatening, really.
The second category is ordinary home- and landowners who stand to lose as government becomes ever more intrusive.
This is much more likely the group the government fears and wants to control.
If you make laws against everything, then everyone's a lawbreaker, right?
Ahh,and there's the rub.
Like the former USSR:
Cheap vodka and free heat,keep them drunk and warm.
Give them a hot dose and solve the problem once and for all. It would be doing the junkies and their families a favor.
Tax dollars. Paying for horrible schools. Paying for a justice system that seems to worship violent and insane people. Paying for abortions. Now possibly someday paying for addicts to get some of their fixes.
Didn't Devo do a song that went something like: "What a beautiful world we live in/Rich, romantic place/Beautiful people everywhere..."
Mark W.
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