A study carried out by universities have found that opiate substitution treatment (methadone) reduced the frequency of drug use.  The study is due for publishing online on the 17th July.

A human rights ruling asserts that heroin addicted convicts cannot be made to go ‘cold turkey’ in prison, costing taxpayers in excess of £100 million.  A report by the think-tank Policy Exchange reveals an explosion in the number given ‘heroin substitute prescriptions’ - costing up to £15,000 per course.

It comes after the last Government agreed to pay almost £750,000 in compensation to 197 addicted inmates made to quit drugs while in custody.

This year £109.1million will be spent on the Integrated Drug Treatment System - with one in every six prisoners receiving a daily dose of a heroin substitute such as methadone.

In the past, detoxification regimes would last for just a few weeks, but a letter from the Department of Health to researchers confirmed regimes now routinely last for longer than three months.

Max Chambers, the report’s author, said: ‘The way the previous government approached the problem of drugs in prisons has clearly failed.

‘It had become the easy option for prisoners’ habits to simply be maintained by the state, with little effort made to properly address their addictions.

‘The change of government is a real opportunity for the Department of Health to come clean about the mismanagement of the Integrated Drug Treatment System (IDTS).

‘We need much more focus on abstinence-based treatments that work and above all we need ministers, not prisoners, to be dictating Government policy.’

The report, based on a survey of 700 inmates in all 139 prisons in England and Wales, found that one in three inmates have used drugs while in jail.

It claimed the setting up of the IDTS in 2007 had led to an increase in the frequency and length of prescriptions of methadone and a decline in shorter detoxification programmes.

The report calls for longer-term prisoners to be expected to become drug-free as part of their parole and for more focus on abstinence-based treatments.

A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘Clinical guidance recommends that prisoners jailed for more than six months should not be maintained on methadone unless there are exceptional circumstances.

‘All treatment, whether in or outside prison, should be aimed at getting people off drugs and maintenance can be part of that programme.

‘The IDTS is being brought in across prisons to provide evidence-based treatment tailored to the needs of the offender. It is currently the subject of a rigorous and extensive four-year prison research programme.’

Director of the Prison Reform Trust Juliet Lyon said: ‘Around three-quarters of people received into prison test positive for class A drugs.

‘To cut crime, save money and improve public health, more effort needs to be put into treating addicts in the community and reviewing current drug policies.’

The general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Dr Peter Carter, has said that the NHS should offer heroin to drug addicts and provide injection rooms in order to reduce crime and infection levels.  Carter said that this would wean addicts off the drug.  Despite criticism that this encourages drug addiction, new research from a pilot study apparently shows that this strategy could work.  Three-quarters of the 127 users involved in the pilot reduced their use of street drugs and spending fell from £300 to £50 a week.  The number of crimes committed also reduced from 1,731 (over a 3-month period) to 547 over a six-month period.  Various support was offered to users including psychological therapy and clinic attendance up to twice daily, seven days a week.  In addition to Carter’s support for ‘consumption rooms’ - these already exist in Sydney and Amsterdam where users have stopped injecting in public places such as schools and the stairwells of housing complexes.

Academic Neil McKechnie of Glasgow University states:  ”Prescribing heroin on the basis of reducing crime is risky territory.  It should be on the basis of clinical need…in this case an individual prescribed a medicine to reduce crime.  It is an ethically questionable proposal.  We should be focused on getting users off drugs, not giving them access to additional drugs.  Certainly over the last 10 years of the Labour government we have emphasised harm reduction over abstinence.”

The Department of Health has updated its guidance document on treating heroin addicts in prison.  The purpose is to determine whether a detoxification, slow reduction or maintenance regime is the appropriate approach when prescribing for those who are opiate dependent.  An ongoing issue is that maintenance prescribing has historically been initiated without full review of the circumstances resulting in inappropriate prescriptions.

Heroin users are being warned as anthrax in drug abusers has claimed its first victim in England.  The death toll of addicts now reaches 11 in the UK and Germany.  Investigations are underway as these cases have no known links to the outbreak in Scotland.