`Safer' drug kills more than heroin

LEGALLY prescribed methadone kills more people annually than heroin, speed, cocaine, crack and ecstasy combined, writes Julian Kossoff.

The first comprehensive analysis of statistics on drug misuse in England and Wales, by the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependency (ISDD), has revealed that in 1996, 387 people overdosed on methadone, the supposedly safer substitute for heroin. Heroin itself was responsible for 187 deaths.

The report, compiled on behalf of the Government's Office for National Statistics, confirms the worst fears of drugs experts and campaigners who have warned that the supply of the highly toxic drug is out of control.

Prescribing the drug to heroin addicts began in the Eighties in an attempt to stop Aids being spread through the sharing of dirty needles. It kills the craving for heroin but does not give the same high and a flourishing black market has developed as addicts sell it to buy more heroin.

Mike Goodman, director of Release, the UK's leading drugs pressure group, said the strategy had been successful in averting a US-style Aids crisis but had created a whole new set of problems.