Scotland's Methadone Policy Comes in for Some Stick

Scotland's methadone policy is severely criticised in this BBC News Item.

I agree with the criticism. To get heroin addicts to take methadone for periods of many years (an example in the article is of a man put onto methadone at age 16 and still taking it 18 years later) in the hope of curing their heroin addiction is clearly illogical. Methadone itself is highly addictive and so there is a strong chance of converting a heroin addict into a person addicted to both heroin AND methadone. I consider methadone an example of expensive pharmaceutical junk.

And according to the article "it costs about £2,800 to fund methadone provision for one addict for one year, and the programme could be costing about £56m in total each year."

This methadone policy is obviously of little benefit to the addicts' health and is a scandalous expense to the public purse. It appears to me to have been invented and to be manufactured expressly to fleece the taxpayer, since it benefits the drug companies and their shareholders, and no-one else.

I for one do not approve of this expensive, and in my view, immoral, exercise in futility.

The way to get people off drugs is to get them off drugs, not to get them onto other or additional drugs.

I used to know a woman who had been prescribed amitriptyline, a tricyclic antidepressant with a host of unpleasant and harmful side-effects, for post-natal depression and was still being prescribed it 30 years later! - This is madness...