Should We Prescribe Heroin? A Current Scottish Debate.

Abstract

There have been recent calls from within both Scotland and England for the wider prescription of heroin to heroin addicts as a way of coping with our burgeoning drug problem and as a route to reducing drug related criminality. But how feasible is heroin prescribing in this context? This paper considers some of the existing research evidence relating to heroin prescribing and looks also at the ethics and practicalities of prescribing heroin to heroin addicts in Scotland. We conclude that whilst the evidence on the benefits of heroin prescribing is far from clear cut there is a case for mounting a Scottish trial of heroin prescribing. Such a trial would need to be tightly controlled and rigorously evaluated. It would need to show that heroin prescribing was associated not only with a comparable level of harm reduction, as methadone prescribing, but that it was also an effective route towards drug users' eventual recovery and drug cessation.