Prescribe heroin for addicts, nurses' chief says

Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said giving heroin on the NHS would drive down crime rates and help wean addicts off the drug.

Speaking in a personal capacity following a debate on the issue at the college's annual conference, he 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.

"It obviates the need for them to steal.

"It might take a few years but I think people will understand.

"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."

Results of NHS pilot studies in London, Brighton and Darlington show that allowing heroin injections under medical supervision can cut local crime rates by two thirds.

Of 127 users involved in the pilot studies, three-quarters "substantially reduced" their use of street drugs and their spending on drugs fell from 300 to 50 a week.

The number of crimes they committed fell from 1,731 in three months to 547 in six months.

Users were offered a range of support including psychological therapy and they typically attended the clinic up to twice daily, seven days a week.

The cost was around 15,000 per patient per year compared with prison costs of 44,000 a year, researchers found.

Dr Carter said schemes in other countries had also seen positive results, experts in Sydney and Amsterdam finding they stopped users injecting in school playgrounds and stairwells.

At the RCN conference in Bournemouth, several nurses agreed with the approach.

Claire Topham Brown, from Cambridgeshire, said providing heroin on the NHS could stop or reduce illegal drug use and crime, cut the transmission of viruses like HIV and hepatitis and provide a "stepping stone" to get people off heroin and on to the heroin substitute methadone.

But Gail Brooks, from the RCN's UK safety representatives committee, opposed the idea, saying: "Where would this stop?

"Cannabis, cocaine, crack cocaine ... other substances?

"If you do this for heroin do you have to do this for every other drug out there?

"Can our NHS afford this?"

Proposals for a new way to treat the most chronic drug users were first advocated in 2002 by the then Home Secretary David Blunkett.

While the number of heroin addicts needing treatment has fallen in recent years, almost 200,000 people receive methadone each year.

The director of communications at the charity Drugscope, Harry Shapiro, said: "We have always been supportive of the heroin trials that have been going on for the last couple of years on the principle that we believe in treatment choice because addiction is a complicated phenomenon.

"It's not like trying to treat something like heart disease – one size does not fit all."

But the chief executive of the Taxpayers Alliance, Matthew Elliott, 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."