Home > Shift in treatment of drugs addicts to focus on live-in schemes (UK).

[Guardian Online] , Wintour, Patrick Shift in treatment of drugs addicts to focus on live-in schemes (UK). (07 Aug 2010)

External website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/06/dru...

David Cameron plans to press ahead with an expensive shift in treatment for drug addicts, towards residential programmes and away from the use of methadone as a substitute licensed drug.

The prime minister has ordered a revised drugs policy to be in place by the end of the year, by which time the Department of Health and Home Office will have been told their budgets.

He is also planning to make the voluntary sector a lead body in delivery of the programme, so reducing, or possibly ending, the role of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse.

Speaking during a PM Direct debate this week, Cameron said: "The last government became too target obsessed. It was all about how many addicts are in touch with treatment agencies, and this, in too many cases, really meant the addict was talking to someone and maybe getting some methadone, which is a government authorised form of opium, rather than heroin. It did not really address the problem – that [the addict] had a drug habit.

 

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