Pubdate: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 Source: Times, The (UK) Copyright: 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd Contact: http://www.the-times.co.uk/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/454 Author: Patrick West Note: Patrick West is the author of Conspicuous Compassion (Civitas) Cited: Association of Chief Police Officers http://www.acpo.police.uk Cited: DrugScope http://www.drugscope.org.uk Cited: Action on Addiction http://www.aona.co.uk Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?131 (Heroin Maintenance) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) THE BEST TREATMENT FOR HEROIN ADDICTS? ARREST THEM The Latest Idea From the Police Is a Nonsense Right and wrong have absconded from the police vocabulary. In their place we have the false reasoning of the morals-free utilitarian. This week Howard Roberts, the deputy chief constable of Nottinghamshire, said that heroin should be prescribed to drug addicts to curb crime. Speaking to the Association of Chief Police Officers in Manchester, he crudely calculated that such a scheme would cost the taxpayer UKP12,000 a year per addict, offsetting the UKP45,000 that a heroin addicts annually steals to feed his habit. We've been here before: four years ago Brian Paddick proposed that cannabis should be legalised to cut crime on his patch in Brixton. However much one might sympathise with the police who are overstretched by drug-related crime and with householders who have been the victim of pilfering junkies, Mr Roberts's suggestion is fundamentally flawed -- it is amoral, defeatist and illogical. Those who seek to legalise narcotics cry "the war on drugs has been lost". One might as well also argue that "the war on murder has been lost" or that "the war on rape, theft, fraud, larceny and pyromania has been lost". Like drug abuse, these are malaises that will always be with us, and no sane person believes they will ever be totally abolished. Rather we just do our best to ensure that they are minimised -- and we do this by enforcing the law and the threat of punishment. Just because you can't eradicate a crime doesn't mean you have to surrender by legalising it. If the police really want to stop heroin addicts committing crime then the best method would not be a ready supply of heroin on the NHS but to arrest heroin users. The frequently employed language of "compassion" is misplaced and misleading in this case; the most caring and the practical thing to do would be to prosecute and imprison users -- to stop their habit. Contrary to the media myth perpetuated by movies such as Trainspotting, the typical heroin addict is as likely to be a sensitive, fragile, middle-class graduate as an aggressive, working-class misfit from the roughest of council estates. Many use this narcotic to escape from their worried reality and into a world of dreams. Addicts are just as likely to be akin to William Burroughs and the Lake Poets -- troubled and tormented neurotics -- as Renton and Spud from that iconic movie. And it is precisely because these heroin addicts need understanding that they need the fear of punishment. Most people develop a life-debilitating heroin problem because they know that the arm of the law won't seize them if they do. According to Gordon Heald's Drugs: A Study Among UK Heroin Addicts, the three main reasons for becoming dependent on drugs are "the need to get a buzz" (39 per cent), "the need to escape from problems" (34 per cent) and "boredom" (31 per cent). Heroin users, or would-be users, need the countervailing force of punishment. Of course, fear of an unenforced law is bound to be non-existent, which is why the police are part of the problem. It is certainly the case in Ireland, and particularly Dublin, which has a notorious heroin problem. I should know. In 1998, two of my cousins died within three weeks of each other, both from heroin overdoses. They were like so many other heroin users: imaginative, ethereal and delicate. In journalism, I've also worked at the same desk as a habitual heroin abuser, who was of a similar disposition. All these sensitive souls -- hardly natural outlaws -- would have forced themselves to quit their habit had they faced the serious prospect of prison, a fine, or bringing shame on their family. But this simple point has been lost in the sociology classes that new police recruits are subjected to. I remember, after we found my cousin dead, my mother remonstrating with the policeman: "Don't you ever enforce the law? Drugs are against the law, you know." To which he dutifully replied: "Drugs are a social problem." Ireland may be a different country, but it appears that the Gardai, the Metropolitan Police and Nottinghamshire Police have all had the same sociology lessons. While most proponents of legalising or decriminalising heroin portray themselves as "caring", the reality is that their utilitarian mindset renders them devoid of humanity. They see only crime figures and statistics, not human beings. Mr Roberts wants to save money, not, it seems, lives. Martin Barnes, chief executive of the drugs charity DrugScope, added: "There is compelling evidence that heroin prescribing, although more expensive than some forms of drug treatment, is cost-effective in reducing drug-related crime and other costs to communities." This is technocracy at its most cold and callous. And then there is that panacea: methadone. Nicola Metrebian, of the charity Action on Addiction, says that her organisation was doing research that would "compare the effectiveness of injectable methadone and injectable heroin to oral methadone". Methadone is no cure-all for heroin; it is (in Dublin at least) a bigger killer than heroin. Mr Roberts, in his bureaucratic-minded search for a quick-fix way to treat the problem, has failed to spy the proverbial elephant in the room: that the best way to prevent people illegally taking heroin is to prosecute those who do. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake