Left in pain

SIR – Ron Hogg, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Co Durham (Letters, September 15), lauds the dispensing of heroin to addicts in the North East as the start of a quiet revolution.

Could we also consider a revolution in the way we prescribe opiates for pain sufferers?

In the 10 years I have been dealing with great pain I have had to fight an endless battle with the NHS to get adequate pain relief. Despite a pain clinic agreeing to my receiving 600ml of morphine sulphate a day, my GP now informs me that a committee somewhere, which I have never met and has never examined my case, has decided that my dose is to be reduced to 120ml a day. Apparently the same is happening to all pain sufferers in East Sussex, and possibly the country.

Such antagonism to opiates seems ideological, as the NHS gives out vast doses of other drugs with horrific side-effects. To those with great pain, opiates make a decisive difference. Lars Newbould

Hastings, East Sussex