Item — HN Reader

"none of those will happen because there are too many people making too much money from the current paradigm"

Portugal

Colorado/Washington/Alaska

In the UK they have returned to prescribing heroin to drug addicts

In New Zealand there is new law around novel drugs that will make them legally available in shops if they can be proved safe

It is happening.

2 comments

> In the UK they have returned to prescribing heroin to drug addicts

Do you have a cite for that please?

Here's the current English guidance for Drug misuse, opioid detoxification.

http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg52

So, there are a few doctors that have the required special licence needed to prescribe heroin as a treatment for addiction. These special licences are not new, they've existed for a long time. I'm not aware of the numbers of licences going up.

https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/formulary/bnf/current/guidance-o...

Most addicts are not going to get heroin, they're going to get oral meds like suboxone.

My comment was based on my general knowledge. Most recently by reading the book "Chasing the Scream". Look it up, I forget the author.

But your challenge made me go look, and in about 20 seconds (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=prescribing+heroin+for+addiction+i...) I found: http://pb.rcpsych.org/content/29/4/123 and http://www.recoveryfirst.org/englands-heroin-experiment.html...

This is a process, attitudes are changing, they have not changed.

Interestingly I have never heard of suboxone. I do not think it is widely used in my community, where methadone is prescribed to addicts.

I no longer have direct connections to addicts (I found that ruinous to my lifestyle) but 15 years ago in my country any body who wanted could go on a methadone maintenance programme and heroin use almost dies out completely.

It did not completely die out as there was a residual interest among users who were not addicts (yet?) so had no need of a methadone habit which is as useless to a drug enthusiast as a nicotine habit, but much less harmful and much less socially acceptable.

These days I have connections to the treatment community which is different and a lot of interesting things are happening (look up ibogaine). I also campaign in the political sphere for drug legalisation as I have seen the harm done by police and judges to those I love.

Your original statement was "In the UK they have returned to prescribing heroin to drug addicts".

The counter-statement was that it doesn't appear to have been a recent change in the numbers. That is, doctors in the UK have been able to prescribe heroin since the 1920s, so long as they had special permission from the Home Office. The first link repeats the baseline that has been present for decades. It does not report a change.

If there's no change, then there's no "return". DanBC's comments were to suggest that there hasn't been a recent change in the numbers. I found http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/1859350836.pdf which says that no more than 50 patients received heroin in 2000, and 9 lived in London. In 2011, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-13944209 says that almost 120 addicts in London, over three years, received heroin this way.

While that is an increase, it's hardly enough to be a significant change.

Your second link appears to not be a high-quality source. For one, it cites Wikipedia. For another, its second citation is to a summary of the survey done in 2000; which is the one I mentioned earlier that found fewer than 50 patients receiving heroin. Therefore, it does not indicate any recent change, either to the UK drug laws or change in medical policy.

I therefore concur with DanBC. The UK has not "returned" to prescribing heroin to drug addicts given the information you provided, or the sources that I examined in trying to answer this for myself.

Colorado and Washington are already blowing it. They are taking tax revenue from the sale of marijuana and using it as regular tax revenue for programs such as schools. Just look at the insidious relationship government has with the lottery to see that we are just shackling ourselves to a whole other host of compromised interests. Once they get that money regularly, they are never giving it back with out a (corrupt) fight which means any means to use the revenue from drug sales can never be used for appropriate or creative means to further solve the drug problem and we will quickly find ourselves in the absurd situation where our elementary schools will be active drug pushers (see the recent John Oliver piece that highlights a New York Public School ad pushing gambling and the lottery as some noble activity).

It's the one major social issue that can completely fund, to the full extent of current science, the research and treatment of it's ill effects on society...and we are throwing the opportunity away that will be extraordinarily, if not impossible, to get back.

They are taking tax revenue from the sale of marijuana and using it as regular tax revenue for programs such as schools.

Is that really blowing it though? I have nothing to prove my claim but I'd say a good dose of substance abuse comes from lacking agency as a result of poor education.

It's the one major social issue that can completely fund, to the full extent of current science, the research and treatment of it's ill effects on society

What about alcohol, which you could argue results in more violence and negative health effects than marijuana consumption?

IMO these are two different problems. One problem is how we treat addictive and/or mind-altering substances and their users. The second problem is how we appropriate tax money (which I will agree with you is completely fucked up).

You can't just take tax money from one source and allocate it against a specific area like education, because then the source that previously funded that cause will reduce its funding and distribute it to other areas.