Alimentar vícios ou esturricar a doença?

Heroin addicts should be prescribed the drug on the NHS [Serviço Nacional de Saúde Britânico] to stop them committing crime, a senior police officer has said.

(Ele deve tomar umas coisas também! Está também a olhar pela vida dele!)

SERÁ QUE TUDO NESTE MUNDO SE MEDE PELA BITOLA ECONOMICISTA??
Haverá outras vantagens, mais fortes, para esta medida ser tida como válida? Serão os arrumadores o maior "incómodo" que a droga provoca na sociedade portuguesa?
Não dará a medida azo a reclamações por parte dos consumidores de cocaína, ecstasy e afins?
A decisão é polémica, certo, mas temos que encarar o mundo como ele é, e não como gostavámos que fosse...


Nottinghamshire Police's Deputy Chief Constable Howard Roberts told the Association of Chief Police Officers' conference on drugs it would cost £12,000 a year for each addict to be treated this way.

But he said the treatment would be cost-effective in the long run because users steal at least £45,000-worth of property a year to feed their addiction. Currently
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addicts are prescribed the heroin substitute methadone.

Mr Roberts stressed his comments, made at the event in Manchester, were a personal view rather than Acpo policy.

But as vice chairman of the Acpo drugs committee his comments were immediately welcomed by leading drugs charity DrugScope.

"We should actively consider prescribing diamorphine, pharmaceutical heroin, to those seriously addicted to heroin as part of a treatment programme for addiction," he said.

"My motives for making such a statement are frankly this: there is an undeniable link between addicted offenders and appalling levels of criminality, as heroin and crack cocaine addicts commit crime from burglary to robbery, to sometimes murder, to get the money to buy drugs to satisfy their addiction. The resulting misery to society is huge."

Home Office research showed heroin addicts commit 432 offences a year, he said.

"Therefore the logic is clear, I suggest, that we take highly addicted offenders out of committing crime to feed their addiction, into closely supervised treatment programmes that, as part of the programme, can prescribe diamorphine," said Mr Roberts.

DrugScope chief executive Martin Barnes said: "We support calls for the extension of heroin prescribing, which for some problem drug users can be an extremely effective form of drug treatment.

"It can have immediate health benefits for the drug user and can for some be the best route to becoming drug-free.

"There is compelling evidence that heroin prescribing, although more expensive than some forms of drug treatment, is cost-effective in reducing drug-related crime and other costs to communities."
in http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22112006/356/police-chief-says-give-heroin-addicts.html