I thought that heroin or opium was a prescription drug in England. I thought that addicts could purchase it in a pharmacy. Maybe I’m waaaaaaay off. But I was surprised to find in a novel I’m reading a reference to the heroin gang warfare in England. Can anyone advance my pathetic understanding of things there?
Just guessing here, but I suspect heroin would be prescribed and dispensed as a maintenance dose, to prevent withdrawal. For a person chasing the real heroin high, they’d probably have to get more illicitly. Hence the drug rings.
The UK is a signatory to the UN single convention on narcotic drugs. Heroin is a schedule IV drug.
So by default:
b) A Party shall, if in its opinion the prevailing conditions in its country render it the most appropriate means of protecting the public health and welfare, prohibit the production, manufacture, export and import of, trade in, possession or use of any such drug except for amounts which may be necessary for medical and scientific research only, including clinical trials therewith to be conducted under or subject to the direct supervision and control of the Party.
Prescriptions for recreational use are not going to be a thing.
SFAIK people seeking treatment for heroin addiction in the UK are offered methadone, but not heroin.
Link to PDF about using heroin assisted treatment for addiction can be found here, page 134 is where the use in the UK is described.
It’s true most addicts these days in the UK are offered either methadone or buprenorphine to treat the addiction but apparently a few still get prescribed heroin.
So in other words, the parties to the treaty agree to do whatever they feel like.
But that said, there are plenty of prescription drugs that are still the focus of a lot of criminal commerce, and even gangs around completely legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco.
To an extent. The treaty seems to provide an easy justification for inertia. Signatories are still expected to provide protection against schedule IV drugs for their populace. The UK’s drug control acts are, in part, the UK’s obligation under this (and other) treaties.
If they have a better idea about how to provide protection, they might have license to implement it, but they are not really free to remove all protective measures. There is of course a tension between politics, science and medicine, and treaty obligations.
The treaty seems to form a key part of an entrenched narcotic control system right across the planet. The treaty also provides strict restrictions on international trade and production of opium and its derivatives. It makes non-prescription supply basically impossible by legal means. Australia is one of only about three suppliers of opium products that are legal under the treaty. We are required to only supply to other nations within the legal frameworks that form the local implementation of treaty obligations.
Interestingly, poppy seeds cause no end of issues. Bread, bagels, and the like, are a significant market for poppy seeds. Those sold are required to have been sterilised to prevent people being able to grow their own opium poppys. This week, here in Oz, the news is reporting that about a dozen people who drank poppy tea becoming ill due to contamination of the poppy seed supply with seeds that contained thebaine (an opiate alkaloid). There will be some serous questions asked no doubt.
How do you think addicts get addicted in the first place? Average citizens aren’t dropping by their GPs for a heroin prescription on their way out for the night.
Sadly, Drugs and every other form of criminality are alive and kicking in the UK. The question sent me to the National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime - 2021.
Demand for illicit drugs remains high in the UK, and overall trends for drug misuse in England and Wales have largely been increasing. Combined annual costs to society, ranging from tackling
supply to providing treatment, total over £19 billion. In 2019 (the latest official figures available),
drug related deaths (DRDs) through misuse were relatively stable at 2,883 in England and Wales,
of which three quarters involved opiates.
Discharges [of firearms] against people and resultant injuries reflect the willingness of criminals to use firearms for debt collection, territorial feuds and recriminations. Whilst most firearms violence is disorganised, it can be exacerbated by OCGs, often involved in drugs supply
don’t they use opium/heroin for terminal patient relief or was that an failed experiment? (I’m going by what I read and heard about in the mid-80s)
For palliative care, the NHS prescribes paracetamol, codeine and morphine, in that order.
Read all about it:
Any form of control has the potential to create a criminal commerce in whatever’s controlled (and thereby restricts an open market), whether that control is medical or by criminal law.
One of the reasons for our current systems of control was that some GPs became notoriously lax about prescribing heroin, but even then, GPs didn’t, as a rule, give out a prescription just because someone asked for it. They certainly don’t now: you’d be referred on to specialist addiction/rehab services.
Yeah. We’re talking England; not West Virginia.
anecdote<
Thirty years ago, an elderly lady friend was visiting her sister in a geriatric ward every evening. All the ladies in the ward were given a glass of sherry at bedtime but her sister didn’t like sherry, so our friend drank hers. It was only later that she found that the sherry was laced with morphine and she felt very guilty about taking her sister’s medication. Fortunately, the sister was discharged after a couple of weeks and lived on into her 90s
Sounds exceptionally civilised. Sure it wasn’t a Bupa hospital?
Nah - 30 years ago - NHS
Looks like Diamorphine (pharmaceutical heroin) can be prescribed for pain relief too: Diamorphine | Cancer information | Cancer Research UK
For the benefit of American Dopers: “paracetamol” is the British name for what we call “acetaminophen”.
Not only the British, but pretty much the pan-European name as far as I am aware.
WHO naming standard too, apparently.