February 19, 2007

• The second link can be accessed via "About HRC" up at the left of the first. Sorry. Reduction and prevention always seem to take a back seat to punishment and prohibition and links.
• Related news: Police chief calls for heroin to be available to addicts on the NHS. Harm reduction makes sense to me.
• Something wrong with the figures in that Independent piece. 40,000 registered heroin addicts; an estimated 40,000 problem users on methadone, and they commit £45,000 worth of crime every year. If they're all on methadone, no wonder they only need £1.12 per year to fund their habit. Especially since several hundred are apparently being prescribed heroin as well.
• I imagine they meant £45,000 per addict, or perhaps per crime, taking police time and so forth into account.
• This sounds more like it: ...an average heroin addict's habit costs around £16,000 a year to feed... stolen goods can only be sold for around a tenth of their true value - meaning addicts have to steal up to £160,000 worth of items... People are prevented from working and contributing to the city because of their addictions. A report from the House of Lords said the cost of heroin to the economy of the UK was £30 billion. Sorry for the derail, gooyfoot.
• By no means: mine was a sloppily constructed post. But the public health problem of addicts is a very different one in the UK from the US, where I live.
• I'd really like to hear what the arguments against giving confirmed addicts a supply of heroin are - it's not clear to me. I can see there might be a danger of reducing the motivation for coming off the stuff. I can see there might be issues about repeatedly increasing the dosage in line with what an addict might want. Are those the reasons? Is methadone supposed to be good enough?
• I think the arguments against are moral; they have nothing to do with public health.
• Methadone is nasty stuff, by all accounts. I read somewhere it's harder to kick than heroin.