BMJ  2008;336:173 (26 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.39465.509884.3A

Letters

Heroin prescription to misusers

Prejudice based medicine?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Treating heroin addition is about changing the addict’s behaviour.1 2 This is not a moral issue. We are not trying to save their souls or turn them away from depravity. The point of treating our vulnerable heroin addicts is five-fold:

To help them come off street heroin
To reduce harm to the addict; the addict’s family, especially children and cohabitees; society (in the sense of crime reduction)
To treat the patient’s physical health problems
To treat the patient’s mental and psychological health problems
To provide social care including support, occupation, and safe housing.

These laudable aims are professed by the National Treatment Agency for substance abuse and shared by all of us who work at treating drug addiction in the UK. If just one addict can be helped to achieve these aims by prescribing heroin and the clinician in charge believes that other substances like methadone, buprenorphine, and the like are . . . [Full text of this article]

Roger Weeks, GP

1 London SW14 7DF

roger@safescript.org


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