All too often, drug addicts get caught up in dangerous criminal activities, some to the extent of taking away the lives. For the longest time rehabilitation centres have been the way to restore sanity into the lives of drug addicts, but after a while, they give in to temptation and they go back into the worst state than they were before they attempted to quit drugs.
Clever land Police have come up with a unique way to counter the addiction. From now henceforth drug addicts will be given free heroin to stop them from committing crimes as part of a radical new trial. Most prolific offenders will be injected with the Class A drug, three-time a day at a special clinic this month. The idea is to wean addicts, many of whom are behind a string of offenses, off the drug with medical-grade heroin.
Findings revealed that 20 of the most hardcore addicts in the North East town, most of whom will now get free heroin in the project had committed a total of 351 offences costing society £784,890. 15 people chosen for the pilot scheme are addicts with criminal records.
The scheme, the first of its kind in England, was created by under-fire Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner Barry Coppinger, whose office is providing almost a third of the annual £440,000 cost. However, he is already receiving backlash for undermining the efforts to fight drug addiction.
“It is not right for a commissioner who has failed so badly, and is stepping down in a matter of months, to make the Cleveland force area a guinea pig for an experimental new drugs policy when he won’t even be around to face its consequences.
“I’m sure most right-thinking people would rather see the hundreds of thousands of pounds he is squandering on this spent on getting the basics right, by investing in frontline policing,” one mayor voiced his concerns.