Daily Express: Cocaine on the NHS

By Tom Whitehead

Cocaine is being handed free to addicts on the NHS, it was revealed yesterday.

And the Government's key drug advisers want access to it made even easier – with nurses and pharmacists getting the power to hand it out.

Currently only doctors at licensed clinics are allowed to do this.

The practice was yesterday criticised as yet another insult for other NHS patients, such as Alzheimer's and cancer sufferers, who face a postcode lottery to get the drugs they desperately need.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said:"Taxpayers are being mugged either way by drug users, either directly for their wallet, or indirectly by the taxman. The NHS should not be providing cocaine at our expense, especially when thousands of law-abiding patients are being denied life-saving treatment." More than 10,000 people receive treatment for cocaine addiction, with three clinics licensed to offer the drug in the most difficult cases.

But the Government would not say yesterday how many receive the drug or how it is administered.

The practice emerged yesterday after the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) called for the licensing regime to be relaxed, so that nurses and pharmacists, as well as doctors, can hand out the drug.

At the first public meeting of the council since it was set up 36 years ago, chairman Professor Sir Michael Rawlins told members he wrote to Home Office minister Vernon Coaker earlier this month to propose the changes.

He said cocaine was a growing concern both among addicts and recreational users such as City workers.

He said there would have to be "robust" arrangements to ensure the substances were managed properly.

But Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: "If Gordon Brown signs up to this it would show yet again that Labour merely seek to manage drug addiction rather than end it.

"The Conservative approach is different. We would stop – not swap – addiction by focussing the drugs budget on expanding the use of abstinence-based rehabilitation programmes.

"This method has proved far more successful at getting people off drugs than the Government's white flag approach." Heroin addicts can already get their drug free as part of their treatment. It emerged earlier this month that they have received £2.5million of free heroin and nursing care in NHS "shooting galleries".

Addicts inject themselves under supervision – but many are still going on to commit more crimes.

A spokeswoman for the National Treatment Agency, which treats addicts, said: "Cocaine prescribing is legally possible in England if licensed to do so by the Home Office, although it is not advocated as an effective treatment for drug addiction within clinical guidelines." And a Home Office spokesman insisted it had no intention of allowing nurse and pharmacist prescribers to apply for licences to treat drug users with cocaine.

He added: "The ultimate aim is to cut drug use and so cut drug-related crime, and the harm caused by illegal substances to individuals, families and communities.

"On 22 March 2007 we issued a consultation on nurses and pharmacists prescribing controlled drugs to make patient care more flexible.

"However, we made it clear then that we were not in favour of allowing nurses and pharmacists to prescribe diamorphine, cocaine or dipipanone [a substitute opiate]. Our position is unchanged."