Scrap prison policy which just encourages drug use
ONE in six prisoners in British jails now receives methadone or some other heroin substitute. It costs the taxpayer more than £44million a year. This legacy of the Labour government must be urgently addressed says a new report from the Policy Exchange think tank which states: “The way the previous government approached the problem of drugs in prisons has clearly failed.
It had become the easy option for prisoners’ habits to simply be maintained by the state”.
Among the most vociferous critics of this approach is the former prison doctor Theodore Dalrymple who has
written on the subject for this paper and who believes that the notion of “cold turkey” resulting from the
withdrawal from opiates is a myth.
The symptoms, he claims, are less unpleasant than a bout of flu and easily alleviated.
What’s more the continuing prescribing of drugs bolsters addiction which in turn leads to further criminal activity both in and out of jail.
The misuse of drugs is one of the gravest issues facing society. At least in a closed environment such as a prison it
ought to be possible to enforce abstinence-based treatments, as this report suggests. A tougher policy
should also make it possible to eradicate the dealing of heroin substitutes by inmate