'Heroin should be made legal'

11:55am Tuesday 20th February 2007

Heroin should be given to hardcore drug addicts to stop them committing crime, a Brighton MP has said.

David Lepper, Labour MP for Brighton Pavilion, warned that drugs were still a "big problem" in the city and backed calls to expand licensed prescription.

Home Office research has found heroin addicts commit on average 432 crimes a year, each costing victims a total of £45,000.

In the UK only a few hundred of the 40,000 registered heroin addicts are being prescribed the drug by doctors as part of a limited experiment.

Yesterday Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers which represents the most senior ranks of the 43 police forces in England and Wales, called for the drug to be made available to more long-term users.

Mr Jones, a former chief constable of Sussex Police, said: "You need to understand there is a hard core, a minority, who nevertheless commit masses of crime to feed their addiction.

"We have to find a way of dealing with them and licensed prescription is definitely something we should be thinking about."

Mr Lepper said: "If it was part of a carefully controlled scheme with carefully chosen clients then it would be good to try it to see if it does help to get people off drugs and help reduce crime.

"It's right to say there's a hard core of people who have a continuing problem and where other methods have not worked.

"The fact remains there is a clear link between hard drug addiction and crime."

But Tim Loughton, Tory MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, said he was "sceptical"

about the prospects of diamorphine, which is identical to heroin but produced under pharmaceutical conditions, providing a long-term solution to the drugs problem.

He said: "Simply coming up with a substitute for the real thing can cause as many problems as it's trying to solve."

Mr Loughton said addicts had been known to take advantage of handouts of methadone, a synthetic substitute, to "get them back to stability"

before going out and stealing to raise money for "the real thing".

The solution was better education and a "massive expansion"

of serious rehabilitation places to get addicts off drugs completely, combined with better mental health treatment.

Nigel Waterson, Tory MP for Eastbourne, said he supported prescription for a "small hardcore"

of addicts who committed a lot of crime and could not kick their habit.

But he remained wholly opposed to widespread decriminalisation or legalisation of heroin, he stressed.

Last October Brighton and Hove was named the drugsdeath capital of Britain for the third year. The International Centre for Drug Policy, at the University of London, said 51 people in the city died from drug-related deaths in 2005.

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