Want to cut crime by two thirds in 6 months?

[TeaFan]

The NHS should offer heroin to drug addicts and open "consumption rooms" where users can go to inject under medical supervision in order to cut crime and keep public spaces free from dirty needles, the head of Britain's biggest nursing union said today.

 

Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said providing heroin on the NHS would cut crime rates and help wean addicts off the drug.

 

There is emerging research that this strategy can work. Pilot studies run by academics at King's College's national addiction centre suggest that allowing users to inject heroin under medical supervision could cut local crime rates by two-thirds in six months.

 

Of 127 users involved in the pilots, three-quarters "substantially reduced" their use of street drugs, while their spending on drugs fell from £300 to £50 a week. The number of crimes they committed fell from 1,731 in three months to 547 in six months.

 

Full article http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/apr/26/prescribe-heroin-nhs-nurse-rcn

 

I agree with him. Even one third less crime in 6 months would be a fantastic achievement, plus it's cheaper to the NHS than what we do already, not to mention the savings to law enforcement and insurance premiums. With a national debt as high as ours, can we really afford not to give this a go?

[libuse]

I'd be suprised if it was only a two thirds reduction in crime. It would almost eradicate acquisitive crime, vastly reduce operating costs for businesses, keep people who use heroin safe and obviously reduce the profitabilty within the illegal supply chain. I can't imagine any government ever having the guts to do it though, sadly.

[RasmusBart]

Your analagy is fraught with failures Teafan.. im gonna rob your car

[John Gault]

Cool:cool:

 

Can we stop the supervision and let them use dirty needles though.

[Halibut]

Brilliant plan - sadly I find it hard to imagine any of the main three parties having the nous or political spine to implement what is so clearly a massively sensible ides.

[spindrift]

Enid Bagnold, for example, who wrote the delightful children's novel, National Velvet, was what our politicians now would call "a junkie", who was prescribed morphine after a hip operation and then spent 12 years injecting up to 350mg a day. Enid never - as far as history records - mugged a single person or lost her "herd instinct", but died quietly in bed at the age of 91. Opiate addiction was once so common among soldiers in Europe and the United States who had undergone battlefield surgery that it was known as "the soldiers' disease". They spent years on a legal supply of the drug - and it did them no damage.

 

 

The Swiss, for example, in 1997 reported on a three-year experiment in which they had prescribed heroin to 1,146 addicts in 18 locations. They found: "Individual health and social circumstances improved drastically ...

 

The improvements in physical health which occurred during treatment with heroin proved to be stable over the course of one and a half years and in some cases continued to increase (in physical terms, this relates especially to general and nutritional status and injection- related skin diseases) ...

 

In the psychiatric area, depressive states in particular continued to regress, as well as anxiety states and delusional disorders ... The mortality of untreated patients is markedly higher." They also reported dramatic improvements in the social stability of the addicts, including a steep fall in crime.

 

There are equally impressive results from similar projects in Holland and Luxembourg and Naples and, also, in Britain. In Liverpool, during the early 1990s, Dr John Marks used a special Home Office licence to prescribe heroin to addicts.

 

Police reported a 96% reduction in acquisitive crime among a group of addict patients.

 

Deaths from locally acquired HIV infection and drug-related overdoses fell to zero. But, under intense pressure from the government, the project was closed down.

 

In its 10 years' work, not one of its patients had died. In the first two years after it was closed, 41 died.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/14/drugsandalcohol.socialsciences

[John Gault]

"Deaths from locally acquired HIV infection and drug-related overdoses fell to zero."

 

Gota take the rough with the smooth I suppose.

[AJ sheffield]

"Deaths from locally acquired HIV infection and drug-related overdoses fell to zero."

 

Gota take the rough with the smooth I suppose.

 

:hihi:

[spindrift]

"Deaths from locally acquired HIV infection and drug-related overdoses fell to zero."

 

Gota take the rough with the smooth I suppose.

 

If a relative of yours developed an addiction to heroin, would their death cheer you?

 

There is no reason why people with a heroin addiction cannot have a safe, legal prescripition which allows them to lead productive, crime free lives.

[donkey]

Unfortunately, any amount of meticulous research is offset by a few screaming headlines in the gutter press. Add a few slithering politicians who know how to whip up popular votes to the mix, and the vicious cycle is complete.