NHS hires nurses to hand out heroin to hundreds of addicts
Fury over centre prescribing free fixes for drug users who can’t quit
SCOTLAND’S cash-strapped NHS has hired a team of nurses to hand out free heroin to drug addicts.
Funded by taxpayers, trained staff will give them up to three shots of medical-grade heroin every day to feed their cravings.
The nurses will work in Britain’s first Heroin Assisted Treatment (HAT) centre which, the Mail on Sunday can reveal, is only a short walk from Glasgow city centre and close to a nursery and busy supermarket.
The controversial multi-million-pound project – backed by the SNP Government – will open within months as part of an unprecedented plan to tackle Scotland’s drugs problem.
The treatment – already offered in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada – would cost an estimated £15,000 per addict per year.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHS GGC) said the facility will save lives, help rid the streets of drug-related crime and reduce the burden that substance abuse and related ill-health place on the health service.
Critics say it could increase the number of heroin addicts and that the cash would be better spent elsewhere in the NHS.
Scottish Conservative public health spokeswoman Annie Wells said: ‘This is the wrong approach, which will only make Scotland’s drugs crisis worse.
‘Heroin addicts should be helped to beat the habit altogether, not be assisted by the NHS in taking the drugs which have ruined their lives. This comes when recovery centres and rehabilitation units are being shunned.’
NHSGGC said the HAT service aims to ‘engage with and improve outcomes for a population of injecting drug users with complex needs who have not benefited from other treatments’.
Addicts who have not quit heroin using conventional treatments, including methadone programmes, will be referred to the HAT centre and prescribed diamorphine.
They will be given an appointment and shown into an injecting booth, where they will be supervised by a nurse who will draw the agreed dose into a syringe. In most cases the addict will inject themselves.
Psychologists and occupational therapists will also be based at the centre to offer support.
The centre in Gallowgate will follow a model used at Dusseldorf’s drug help association for more than a decade. It is one of ten HAT facilities across Germany which aim to get drug abuse off the streets.
There, the Mail on Sunday found a queue of addicts, many hooked for more than 20 years.
Drug user Karl, who has been on heroin for 45 years, said: ‘The drugs are good, I don’t get sick, I don’t have to resort to crime to get a fix. I am almost normal.
‘They haven’t found a druggie’s body in the street in ages because people are coming here instead.’
Violent drug-related crime in Germany has dropped by a third, recent studies show, and the profits of drug dealers have reduced but there is little evidence the scheme has cut the number of drug users.
NHSGGC began recruiting addiction nurses last month for when the centre opens after the summer. Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) had to shelve a separate proposal for a ‘fix room’ – where addicts could inject their own drugs under supervision – in 2017 after the Lord Advocate declined to grant a legal exemption under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
However, the HAT centre will operate within existing legislation that allows doctors with a special licence to prescribe medical-grade diamorphine as a second-line treatment for opiate addiction. Service users will be checked to ensure they are not drunk or taking other drugs to minimise the risk of overdose and adverse side effects.
The doctors and nurses – as with all medical staff – are indemnified against potential legal action.
An estimated 5,500 people inject drugs in the Glasgow area and more than 500 regularly shoot up in public in the city centre.
However, a drug expert warned the scheme would ‘incentivise failure’ and could lead to thousands of Scots hooked on NHS heroin. Professor Neil McKeganey, director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research, said: ‘The treatment of people addicted to heroin should be focused on helping them into a drug-free state, not facilitating dependence.
‘It should be focused on enabling them to recover and I fear this will achieve the opposite.
‘You are effectively saying to users that if they don’t get better on other things, such as methadone, you will give them the drug they
‘I don’t have to resort to crime to get a fix’
crave. I worry the number of users judged as appropriate will steadily increase in the same way methadone prescriptions have increased.
‘We will end up with tens of thousands of addicts being prescribed free heroin on the NHS.’
But Susanne Millar of Glasgow City HSCP, said: ‘This public injecting group has high rates of hospital admissions, incarceration and homelessness. Conventional treatment and services have not been as effective as we would want in reducing health risks and costs. Our goal is for users to recover from their addiction. However, some service users have had a number of failed attempts at quitting heroin. Evidence from other countries has shown HAT to be effective.’
A Glasgow City HSCP spokesman added: ‘Patients who engage with the HAT service must demonstrate a high degree of commitment to the treatment programme. There will be a phased implementation of the service with small numbers initially.’