Free heroin for drug addicts?

Published on Tuesday 26 June 2007 01:48

SCOTLAND has one of the worst drug addiction problems in Europe.

There are some 50,000 users of Class A hard drugs in Scotland - about 1 per cent of the population. In the last 12 months, a number of key individuals involved with Scotland's drugs problem have called for a radical rethink of how to deal with this social scourge. They include Tom Wood, Scotland's official drugs tsar, and Susan Deacon, former Holyrood health minister. These have been joined by John Vine, chief constable of Tayside and the most senior police officer to break ranks on drugs policy.

Mr Vine makes the obvious point that decades of attempting to curb hard-drug use by cutting off the supply have ended in comparative failure. Like Mr Wood and Ms Deacon, he argues that there has to be a simultaneous effort on reducing demand at source. To do so, he suggests, will require examining hitherto "socially unacceptable" measures, including providing free heroin prescriptions for addicts as a way of cutting crime and putting criminal dealers out of work.

Mr Vine's ideas will not be universally acceptable. How would you stop free heroin actually encouraging drug dependency? But he is correct to argue for fresh thinking on the issue. This is a war that cannot be won by containment only. Education and persuasion are just as important.