Do you think giving out free heroin to drug addicts in specialised clinic?
Methadone is a disastrous choice for management of drug addiction. It is both more addictive and causes more fatalities than heroin. Most of the justification for methadone maintenance, the commonest management, ( different from using methadone to withdraw,) is based on some health economic studies of the 1980s which showed that addicts on methadone programs steal less! There are no useful studies which show any real medical advantages. Such methadone programs that there are in the UK are very poorly run and controlled, with most addicts using the drug as a ‘ top-up.’ I worked with drug addicts within the Scottish Prison Service, where I was a Prison Medical Officer for 13 years. Universally addicts disliked methadone, but it was often, particularly in recent years the only option offered. Many felt it was the worst of all the managements they had tried. No longer politically correct, and indeed some addicts are now trying to sue because they were subjected to it, group cold-turkey was
