Sep 2009 16

Poverty and Addiction10

The Independent broke the story this week, and it has been followed up in most of the other nationals, that the Government is planning to roll out shooting galleries for smack addicts, where they can go and get great quality drugs to inject, under supervision and free of cost. Because a group of experts has told the Government "it works".

The fact of "it working" seems to be based on the fact that the programme makes heroin use "an everyday mundanity" and that addicts buy less street heroin once they are enrolled in the programme:

1. Heroin use should never become an everyday mundanity. It is against the law, and the fact that the Government are accepting heroin addiction instead of cracking down and trying to stamp it out reflects an utter poverty of ambition.

2. Of course they buy less street heroin. That's because they are getting purer heroin for FREE at the shooting gallery.  

There is no empirical evidence that this programme is more effective than others in getting addicts off the brown stuff altogether, which is surely what we should be aiming for?

The BBC has also reported that these shooting galleries "cut crime". How do they know this? Because the patients enrolled in the scheme were asked: "have you committed any crimes recently?" The addicts duly replied: "No," or possibly: "less than I used to before you gave me lovely free heroin". I would hardly call this conclusive evidence of a drop in drug-related crime. Heroin addicts are not stupid, and they know that if they say they no longer commit crimes, they are more likely to continue getting free drugs. And one thing is for sure: addicts will do almost anything to get a fix. They threaten doctors and pharmacists, they are certainly not going to stop short of telling a few fibs about their income streams.

Many taxpayers will have an objection to paying for something that they have a moral objection to. Further, this scheme comes with a hefty price tag of £15,000 per patient. It is being funded by the NHS, our struggling healthcare system that is currently not able to provide life-saving cancer drugs or hip-ops, without the added burden of doling out free skag.

I have written on this blog before that I agree with needle exchange programmes, but that they must operate for diabetics and addicts alike. We already foot the bill for these needle exchange programmes, as well as methodone treatments, but actually supplying high grade illegal drugs is a step too far.

There are a lot of demands on the resources of hard-pressed taxpayers, and this scheme should not even feature on the list. The Government should focus on looking after law-abiding people who have fallen ill through no choice of their own, and more time enforcing the existing law, which recognises that heroin is a highly illegal drug that ruins the lives not only of addicts but also of their families and in their communities.

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  • Ewan Hoyle

    There are several problems with your arguments against prescription. Firstly, not including the criminal act of taking heroin, nearly all of heroin addicts crimes will be acquisitive crimes to fund their drugs that will cost them around £400-£600 per week. If you reduce the cost of this habit to zero, you remove the need to commit crime to fund it and so are likely to greatly reduce your criminal activity. Yes, some will still occasionally commit crime, but I suspect this is only because they have been driven to break the moral taboo of criminal activity by the inflated costs of prohibited heroin. Simple economics of scale should reduce rapidly the £15000 per year cost of the scheme if it were expanded. If the cost is what you object to, why do you not suggest solutions to this? Finding alternative sources of heroin, direct purchase of opium from Afghan farmers for example, would greatly reduce costs. Can we not exempt addictive drugs from free prescription charges and allow the addict to at least partially fund their provision?
    If heroin prescription is expanded to all users who currently commit acquisitive crime to fund their habit, there is the potential to reduce domestic burglaries by 80% and bring two thirds of street prostitutes off the street corners. Billions could be cut from criminal justice costs, not counting the massive benefits to the taxpayer of being freed from the fear of crime that addicts currently create by their actions.
    Your shortsightedness on this issue is massively failing the interests of the taxpayers you claim to represent.

  • Nick

    Well, Switzerland has moved to this model.
    10% reduction in adicts, year on year.
    Strikes me you shouldn’t be so quick to condem.
    The deal is simple. Use in these spartan surroundings only.
    If found in possestion outside of these areas, then immediate jail sentences with an escalator. 1 month first offence. x2 second. x3 third…

  • Rory Duncan

    this seems like the most sensible substance abuse management policy that any government in the UK has proposed for many a decade. This taxpayer, for one, wholeheartedly supports it.

  • http://pootling.net minifig

    Speaking as a taxpayer, I think this is a really short-sighted and blinkered notion of what can be done by the state to solve the problems of drug addiction and, more widely, acquisitive crime.
    You point out that heroin use is ‘against the law’ like this is a rule of nature that can never be changed. Heroin wasn’t always against the law, and when it wasn’t there was a considerably smaller problem of crime directly linked to heroin addiction.
    It seems to me that rather than actually looking at the evidence, you’re letting prejudice influence your opinions of schemes you find unpalatable.

  • Jen Martin

    I agree with Nick, the Switzerland experience suggests that this is certainly worth considering here.
    I’m a taxpayer – you’re not representing my views.

  • spudman101

    “The Government should focus on looking after law-abiding people…”
    I don’t see why breaking the law should affect your right to medical treatment. Should all law breakers be equally de-prioritised, or only those who are also drug addicts?
    Also, if addicts will do almost anything to get a fix surely it’s better to give them the drugs without them resorting to crime? At least that’s increasing the safety of “law-abiding people”.

  • davmc

    So we should just roll over and give addicts freebies on our taxs then.How many more will join the queue as it will not be frowned upon.Prostitutes will still ply their trade as they need other things besides drugs,like food.You people knocking this article may well be able to afford the extra taxes,I can’t.

  • Ed

    The cost of drug related crime is greater than the cost of treating the problem. This is a sensible and long overdue measure, and I think it’s abhorrent that the TaxPayers’ Alliance is against it.

  • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ Andrew Lloyd

    This is a brilliant and long overdue idea. Finally the government is sensibly targeting taxpayer’s money in a way that will reduce the costs of running the same people through repeated rounds of the criminal justice system. A lot of addicts never break habits and thus die. This has to be one way of at least beginning to manage addiction.
    The last sentence in your piece shows how muddled your thinking is.
    This taxpayer welcomes a move that will better use my money and save money in the long run.

  • Alanin Wales

    Not only is it addict related crime that will be reduced but also gang related crime. i.e. street shootings. With no financial gain most gangs will simply peter out and the streets in theory should become safer.
    Removing financial incentive from the supply of drugs can only be a good thing all round. Make it free, we can bring our troops home from afghanistan as the taliban will have no source of funds for their weapons. Buy it direct from the poppy farmers cut out the middlemen. The actual cost of heroin is quite low..it is the drug dealers and the police / political payoffs that inflate the price.