How Much Heroin Maintenance (Containment) in Britain?

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Abstract
The British policy of providing heroin legally to a few addicts at Drug Treatment Centers (DTC) is referred to as heroin maintenance. Virtually unknown statistics produced by the Home Office for the United Nations were reproduced in some detail to make them widely available to professional researchers. These statistics indicated that the provision of legal heroin was rare: about 4% of British opiate addicts at DTC receive heroin without methadone for over 1 yr. About 12% receive heroin and/or methadone for 1 yr or more. The majority of British addicts were maintained on methadone only. Shifts in drugs being prescribed were due more to patient turnover than to physicians switching addicts from heroin to methadone. Implications of this data for the transatlantic debate on heroin maintenance were considered.

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