Is heroin so passe?

[spooky3]

But you were talking about winos earlier. Addicts who don't pay a premium to drink alcohol away from the masses. Infact the very opposite. They drink cheap booze in the middle of town.

 

You can't even keep a solid line of argument.

 

Eh? All sides of the story are relevant, and different!

 

The points relate to different segments, debate, don't be silly!

 

 

EDIT:

 

Note that those posts are in response to different questions! Everybody won't fit into a single nice little box, don't be so far right wing in your thinking!

[JFKvsNixon]

In earlier posts I suggested addicts may be better served by mental health services to instill a will to stop the addiction rather than maintaining the addiction by supplying them with drugs.

 

Undoubtably some would, for legal and illegal drugs. As I posted earlier on this thread there is a big element of addicts that started of self medicating for underlying mental health and emotional problems.

 

The problem with this approach is very expensive, mental health care is currently really underfunded and it does struggle to cope with it's current commitments; which I guess is part of the problem.

 

The problem is that people want their health budget spent on the emotive and headlining sectors like emergency or cancer care, so the "cinderella services" have always lagged behind them.

[ferno]

It's chicken-and-egg really, there is some evidence schizophrenics seek release in cannabis so you could just as easily say schizophrenia can cause cannabis use rather than the other way round.

 

 

Take the Ipswich prostitutes, 5 women murdered because for some their troubled backgrounds led to a dependence on illegal heroin and in turn led to their deaths, prostitutes being especially marginalised and vulnerable. We're failing our most vulnerable.

[spooky3]

It's chicken-and-egg really, there is some evidence schizophrenics seek release in cannabis so you could just as easily say schizophrenia can cause cannabis use rather than the other way round.

 

 

Take the Ipswich prostitutes, 5 women murdered because for some their troubled backgrounds led to a dependence on illegal heroin and in turn led to their deaths, prostitutes being especially marginalised and vulnerable. We're failing our most vulnerable.

 

And many prostitutes were abused as children by alcoholic or drug addicted parents.

[ferno]

The one sure way to reduce prostitution: heroin prescription.

 

In late 2006, the whole of Britain watched in horror as five vulnerable female prostitutes were, one by one over the course of one and half months, picked up off the streets of Ipswich and taken to their deaths. The last victim, Paula Clennell, was even seen on television stating that, despite news of the murders and despite being alerted to the fact a killer was on the loose, she would continue working the streets as she ‘‘needed the money’’ to fund her drug habit. The killer was eventually identified as a Mr Steve Wright. In February 2008, Mr. Wright was found guilty of all five counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. But the truth is that all five deaths were preventable. Preventable, that is, for want of some political courage on the part of our leaders.

 

In response to the murders, there was, of course, a wide and varied national debate about policy on prostitution, and how to make these vulnerable women safer. Criminalization of demand, legalization, brothels – all were considered and discussed. Although these are urgent and legitimate areas for debate, one simple way to keep vulnerable women away from ‘‘the oldest oppression’’ as some feminists prefer to call it, was ignored: heroin prescription.

 

But before explaining the rationale for this, it’s worth describing in more detail the risk that women put themselves in when they enter into prostitution. Here are a few shocking, striking facts: a Home Office study from 2004 ↑ found that 60 prostitutes had been murdered within the last ten years; more than a quarter report attempted rape; and over 50% of women start in prostitution before the age of 18. And let’s not forget: prostitution, by its very nature, involves having sex with someone you do not want to have sex with – a fact too often overlooked.

 

And here’s yet another astonishing statistic: according to the Fawcett Society ↑ , 63% of women in prostitution report that they are doing so in order to fund a drug habit – the drug, in most cases, being heroin. The immediate response is, of course, to call for rehabilitation services to be enhanced, broadened, and improved. Now, rehabilitation programmes have their place, and it is imperative that the health service try to wean people off drugs entirely, but to think this is the only way of dealing with the problem misses one hard, crucial fact: rehabilitation of hard drug users have a very low success rate. Even the swishest, swankiest form of residential rehab only has a success rate of 50% at best, according to research by Dr David Best, chair of the Scottish Drug Recovery Consortium ↑ . For a significant number of addicts rehab, sadly, doesn’t work. It is, as the medical research refers to it, a ‘chronic relapsing condition’.

 

The solution for this group of remaining addicts is to provide a safe, clean supply of heroin (otherwise known as diamorphine), prescribed by a medical professional, allowing them to hold down a stable, unchaotic life, where they no longer have to burgle or prostitute themselves to fund their ineradicable habit.

 

 

‘The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine ↑ records that a large proportion of the illness experienced by blackmarket heroin addicts is caused by wound infection, septicaemia, and infective endocarditis, all due to unhygienic injection technique’. (But, given that street heroin has a purity of between 20-90%, it’s probably wise not to go near it).

 

Interestingly, he gives a few historical examples of well-functioning heroin addicts, including the children’s novelist Enid Bagnold, who died quietly in her bed at the of 91, having spent twelve years her life after a hip operation consuming up to 350 mg per day. Two others of note include Dr William Stewart Halstead – widely regarded as the most pioneering surgeon in US history – and Dr Clive Froggatt, Margaret Thatcher’s health advisor (now an avowed champion of heroin prescription on the NHS).

[ferno]

A comprehensive 2006 study conducted by the Joseph Rowntree ↑ Foundation found that Drug Control Rooms – supervised clinics where heroin addicts could turn up at any point, day or night, to shoot up – had been a stunning success: places where drug deaths fell to literally one – one! – and levels of HIV infection collapsed from 50% to 2%#.

 

 

Once addicts have a safer, cleaner supply of their drug – where they can, of course, be slowly weaned off it, inch by cautious inch – the need to deal to fund vanishes: the Global Commission on Drug Policy ↑ highlighted that under a heroin-prescription policy the number of new users fell by a spectacular 80%,

 

Ibid.

 

 

It gets people OFF heroin. It reduces the use of the drug. Saves lives.

[janie48]

Ibid.

 

 

It gets people OFF heroin. It reduces the use of the drug. Saves lives.

 

Good post, good link.

[ferno]

Haw crazed and mad does this lady look?:

 

 

 

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40018000/jpg/_40018145_heroin_mag_203.jpg

 

Errrr, not very.

 

 

 

Erin O'Mara is a bright, bubbly magazine editor - hardly the stereotype of someone who injects heroin four times a day.

 

But her habit, now in its 20th year, does not line the pockets of a drug dealer. The 34-year-old gets her fix from her local chemist in west London. This "perfect prescription", as she calls it, began two years ago and rescued her from a life of prostitution, drug dealing and serious illness.

 

The downward spiral began with Erin's first taste of heroin aged 15 while in her native Australia, and has included 10 unsuccessful methadone programmes along the way.

 

To finance her habit, she began working as a masseuse, which led to escort work and then street prostitution. That stopped when she discovered she was HIV positive.

 

But the prescription has transformed her life. As founder of Black Poppy, a magazine by and for drug users, she addresses drug conferences and is being consulted about pilot projects.

 

Sitting in her office, she says: "My prescription has meant I have money now, and choices I can make in my life - simple things like what I want for dinner. I can do things I haven't done for years and can think five years ahead. Before I was just thinking about my next 'hit'."

 

 

 

 

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3592877.stm

 

 

To those who despise drugs and users: why do you want to pay to keep them tortured in prison when they can be working and paying taxes?

 

 

Reform of heroin laws would be the single most profound move the government could make in reduction of property crime, prostitution, HIV and human suffering.

[JFKvsNixon]

It's chicken-and-egg really, there is some evidence schizophrenics seek release in cannabis so you could just as easily say schizophrenia can cause cannabis use rather than the other way round.

 

 

Take the Ipswich prostitutes, 5 women murdered because for some their troubled backgrounds led to a dependence on illegal heroin and in turn led to their deaths, prostitutes being especially marginalised and vulnerable. We're failing our most vulnerable.

 

We are only talking about hypothesises, but the self medication one has been around for around 30 years, and I believe it to be more credible that the one that you suggest.

[janie48]

Here is my link.

 

http://www.thegooddrugsguide.com/heroin/dangers.htm