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Heroin on prescription would be for those already addicted to the drug - registered addicts. It wouldn't be available to everybody. It would mean these addicts coudl recieve the drug they need whilst bringing them into contact with the very people that can offer them help.
I'm sure the cost of this treatment will pale in comparrison to the cost of drug related crime and the money that you stop from funding organised crime.
It would have made much more sense to compare the taking of ecstasy to another recreational activity rather than make comparrisons against a medical drug. The short term risk i.e risk of death, from horseriding, recreational fishing, and downhill skiing for instance is on about the same level as taking ecstasy. That's from the governments own risk asessment. The risk from jumping out of plane with a sheet on your back is even higher.
If decriminalise heroin then you give them more of a chance to get off drugs. That's the point.
You can either give them the drugs and offer them help to get off, or you can let them get their drugs from criminals where's there's no offer of help.
It's a no brainer.
I'm not criticisng your idea for minute, it just seems that, the more you look at the question of legalisation, the more questions it raises. It's undoubtedly a better option, in most senses of the word, than the current system, but... I don't know. This could go on a while...
Not all users are addicts.
There are two seperate issues here. Dealing with drug addiction and the classification of drugs.
I think we need to think seperately about drugs like heroin because they are so incredibly habit forming and dangerous. Heroin is a completely different beast to ecstacy and needs to be treated differently.
I am not making a point, just raising another issue.
SG; As to restricting supply to current users, its a difficult judgement which doctors already make all the time when they are prescribing methadone, which is also linked to addiction and deaths.
:yes:
There's a good possibility it would also deglamorize the use of heroin and hard drugs amongst young people. Right now, heroin is often seen as glamourous and associated with celebrity and success. You only need to see all the great (and not so great) rock artists who have been heroin users to appreciate that. There's nothing glamourous about going to your clinic and getting a script though. It makes it seem more like a terminal illness or something, which isn't exactly going to have all the impressionable kiddies trainspotting is it?
:yes: Exaclty.
So of course of what I see daily you could count me in on the anti-drug side.
I have no idea how an anti-drug program in the UK works, but over here they do become a substance called "substitol" from clinics. Well, either they are using it wrong for more effect (they get those really dark blue lips, because.... well, that are details), or they are selling it. 20 steps on Karlsplatz and a dozen people unable to walk straight say "need/want substi?" as you are passing them. I don't know how this is going to help?
I try as hard as possible not to be one of those militant anti-drug-dudes they think drug users are monster (best friend of highschool was hard drug user and I somehow had to accept it). I just have no idea how legalizing it would help. Yea, I see that it helps lowering the drug-related crime, but how is it helping the people who are actually addicted? At 6 in the morn already fucked out of their brain, sleeping in the toilets of karlsplatz, begging for money, selling their substitol (probably to buy 'real' stuff). Now you give it to them for free, how is this going to work out?
I think what people are sayin is. If drugs like heroin were made legal on prescription, addicts would come into contact with people that can help them out with the addiction.
I wonder, would it be free on the NHS? If not, it'd have to go cheap to undercut street value and tempt addicts away from the street dealers.
It will work very much like it does now, except addicts will be given the intoxicant of their choice rather than one which they dont want and which they sell on.
Prescribing for heroin addicts happens every day, all I am suggesting is that we actually prescribe heroin as well as the alternatives we have now. That way doctors have greater options and addicts dont have to steal to buy dirty crap from the black market.
As for how it would work in practice, well it would work very much like it does now with methadone, for those you think might sell their prescription you ask to use infront of someone or in a controlled environment. And those you trust because of longer term work you allow to use off site. Yes, there probably would be some heroin making its way onto the black market, but frankly that would actually be an improvement on the stuff out there now so although every effort should be made to stop it, it wouldnt be the end of the world if it happened.