Prisoners Kick Drug Habit, Government “Retoxifies” Them

In an On the Square feature last month, Matthew Hanley wrote about the ineffectiveness of needle-exchange programs and other harm reduction strategies. He asked, “[W]hat should we think of a philosophy whose goal is to sanitize the entire enterprise of addiction ad infinitum ?”

Many who are prescribed methadone as a substitute for heroin stay on it for years, or even decades. Most Scotsmen, for example, never get off it. Methadone is itself responsible for a great many deaths by overdose today—in some cases, proportionally higher than those by heroin overdose.

You would think that government agencies would want to keep people away from such dangerous, highly addictive substances. But in the U.K., prisoners who have beaten their drug dependency while incarcerated are being given substances such as methadone before their release —all in the name of harm reduction:

The process, called “retoxification”, is allegedly designed to boost the tolerance of former addicts who are deemed likely to start using drugs on their release, to minimise the risk of them taking an overdose.

But critics of the treatment have accused prison doctors, acting under Department of Health guidelines, of “state-sponsored” drug dealing and “giving up on tackling” the problem.

Kathy Gyngell, of the Centre for Policy Studies, said: “It gives the impression the Government is giving up on tackling drug addiction.

“This doesn’t get people off drugs – but captures them in the grip of methadone instead.”

The Sun reported that the process has been ongoing in English prisons for the last five years and that more than 460 prisoners have undergone retoxification. It was already known to be in operation in Scotland. Senior police officers were said to be furious at the news, with one saying: “We have enough difficulties coping with drug-fuelled crime without ministers sanctioning this.

“It’s one of the craziest ideas from any government.”