Give addicts free heroin, says chief constable

A chief constable has called for heroin to be prescribed free to Britain's 300,000 addicts.

Richard Brunstrom, the head of North Wales Police, wants heroin possession to be decriminalised and people caught with small quantities of the drug to be treated. His comments are the latest proposal by a senior police officer for a more liberal approach to drug use.

Mr Brunstrom said pure heroin should be provided on prescription for addicts, because that would remove the need for users to commit crime to pay for their habit. He told Police Review magazine: "Heroin does not make you commit crime; it gets you addicted. If you could get free heroin you wouldn't commit crime.

"We know that a third of all crime is committed by people to get money to support their drug habit.

"In theory, at least, if we gave away heroin to those people who needed it, they should not need to commit crime and crime should go down. Why are we allowing these people to become criminals?"

Research has found that a serious heroin user needs £100 a day to finance the habit and as much as 70 per cent of property crime might be committed to fund addiction.

Mr Brunstrom, who is to make a written submission to the Home Affairs Select Committee, which is examining the issue of drugs, is expected to say that the policy based on a war on drugs is "an almost unqualified disaster" and that there is now a need for a Royal Commission into the problem.

Other senior officers are known to agree with Mr Brunstrom's proposals, including Sir David Phillips, the Kent Chief Constable, who is the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Police chiefs are reviewing the association's drug policy and are expected to recommend a radical shift in thinking on how to deal with addicts. This could include greater prescribing of heroin and the establishment of so-called shooting galleries – areas where addicts can get clean needles and medical care.

At present only a few hundred people are prescribed heroin in Britain. The Home Office has licensed about 100 doctors who can prescribe heroin. Most of the addicts have special medical needs and are prescribed methadone, a heroin substitute, which they must take at chemist's shops or GP's surgeries.

Prescribing pure heroin would also help to prevent the dozens of overdoses and deaths caused every year by addicts taking contaminated or unexpectedly strong drugs.

Mr Brunstrom is highly critical of the Government's drugs policy. He said: "I disagree with the war on drugs policy, but the parts about harm reduction and health improvements in the Government's strategy is quite sound stuff. It's not resourced properly and has not been pursued enthusiastically enough but much of the thinking is there already."

He believes Britain should adopt the system used in Portugal, where drugs remain illegal but anyone caught in possession of a small amount of drugs is put on a course of treatment overseen by a lawyer, a doctor and a social worker. He said: "I will be astounded if our Government is still pursing its war on drugs in 10 years' time because I think the Portuguese approach is going to sweep the world."

The police service is increasingly in the forefront of radical approaches to drug use. Police in the south London borough of Lambeth, which includes Brixton, are operating a scheme under which anyone caught with a small amount of cannabis escapes with a warning. More than 400 people have been issued with warnings since the scheme began in July.

Commander Brian Paddick, who runs the scheme, argues that it allows his officers to concentrate on heroin and crack cocaine dealers.

But many people, including some police officers, are fiercely opposed to the relaxation of laws towards cannabis, and particularly any class A drug such as ecstasy or heroin, because they believe such moves encourage greater abuse and lead to addiction.

While the Home Office publicly says it has no intention of relaxing the laws on heroin, it is keeping under review the proposal for heroin "shooting galleries".