PRESCRIBING HEROIN 'A NECESSARY EVIL'

PRESCRIBING heroin on the NHS may be a "necessary evil" to tackle
Scotland's worsening drug addiction problem, campaigners said yesterday.

Alastair Ramsay, the director of Scotland Against Drugs, said giving GPs
the authority to prescribe heroin would help drug users to access medical
services for treatment and help reduce the damaging effects of drug-related
crime.

His comments came as it emerged that the House of Commons Home Affairs
Select Committee is set to recommend a network of "safe injecting areas",
where addicts can use diamorphine, or medical heroin, prescribed by doctors.

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, has already signalled his intention to
extend the prescription on heroin, allowing more licensed GPs to give out
diamorphine from December this year.

Next month, he is also likely to amend the Misuse of Drugs Act so cannabis
can be downgraded from a Class B to a Class C drug. However, Home Office
officials said there were no plans to downgrade ecstasy from a Class A
drug. Mr Blunkett's former Cabinet colleague, Mo Mowlam, went further
yesterday, calling on the government to have the "guts" to legalise both
cannabis and ecstasy.

She told the BBC's Breakfast With Frost: "I would regulate it, make sure
it's clean, how it is sold and, in addition, you could tax it." The number
of people using heroin in the UK has risen dramatically from 1,000 in 1971
to some 240,000. Despite methadone programmes and special drugs courts,
Scotland's heroin scourge remains high with more than 55,000 problematic
drugs users.

Although classification of drugs is a reserved matter, treatment policy
remains a matter for the Executive.

Mr Ramsay urged society to face the fact that we may never stamp out drug
misuse.

He said: "This is something which may be a necessary evil. We need to
broaden the number of strategies we have for dealing with people who have
got drugs problems.

"In the 1960s, heroin was distributed by GPs, so this is technically
nothing new."

Mr Ramsay said that there would have to be safeguards to ensure that
prescribed drugs did not leak onto the black market and added protection
for GPs' security.

He added: "I'm sure everybody in Scotland would like a society where drugs
misuse just didn't happen, but we've got to be pretty hard-nosed about the
reality. It may well be that GPs prescribing heroin may be one of the
necessary evils we will have to put in place to keep drug users out of
courts and stop them from breaking into our houses and our cars."

Colin Shanks, 48, from Cranhill, Glasgow, watched as first his son and then
his daughter became hooked on drugs. His son first used heroin aged 12.

He said: "I've seen the hell that comes out of heroin. I've seen my boy
almost die eight times. The reality is that everything that has been tried
for the last 15 years has not worked. They have been prescribing heroin in
Liverpool in a trial and it seems to have a good success rate. Society
would benefit because they wouldn't steal to feed their habit."