New drug strategy

[OP8S]

Yip, I think  you've hit the nail on the head there Derek. If your CDT doesn't agree with some issue then they will find & use policy to back themselves up, hide behind. The same goes for anything that they want to push through. My GP has in the past prescribed me high doses of weaker opiates & would do again. The only problem being that methadone & subutex are the only substitution scripts available through my local CDT, though other options are legally acceptable. If I was to see my GP in his own surgery rather than the meth clinic, outside the care of my CDT then his practice manager would be on his back for allowing addicts into the surgery in which he practices the rest of the time. Even though I'm very well behaved, polite & am not what the public would percieve as an addict.
Next time I speak to him alone I might ask him if I could be treated by him privately & if I could then at what price ? This is just maybe a a fancyfull idea though.

[derek d j]

Yes, OP8, that's my main concern as I go though Cantab injectable users weekend of the long worries.

After considerable attempts to identify a 'problem' that might post facto justify cutting my script, the dsp more or less gave up on that front. After all, they'd be hard put to come up with why 20 odd 'clients' all developed individual problems at the same time. They did, actually; the dsp gave them one when they took away their scripts to solve their problem. Alice through the funhouse mirror stuff.

No, the argument now is one of 'policy'. Why should the taxpayer cough up the costs of addict handouts? Apart from details like all would be happy to pay themselves, most of the cost comes from excessive manufacturers' mark up and comparison with the cost of illegal users to criminal justice or the NHS, there's the question of who deserves what slice of the pie. The kind of people who think bad bankers merit £1-5 million a year howl with outrage at the £3500 doled out to the jobless.  The power and the problem.

The law of lowest common denominator is noplace more ruthlessly appled than to 'drug addcts'. Feel free to kick 'em as you pass, like you would a niggah or Jew. The idea that some folk are better off on script is simply not accomodated. Perhaps we've hidden our lights under the bushel of convenience for too long. Whatever, 'policy', as suggested by persistent providers to the new government and returned refined by Tory philosophy, is to get all scriptees off. That way, these decadents will metamorphise into good conforming citizens.

It won't work, of course.  No more than destroyng poppies. The unease that inspires drug use will simply find expression elswhere. Just another mistake in a long line. But who cares? Treatment oligarchs will make bucks and trickledown economics allow smallers shares for their obedient servants. After all, it's only junkies. But that's us. I'm not junk, I'm a law-abiding British citizen old enough to know what's right for me.

In a way, we must shoulder a share of the blame. We've been silent too long. Now it's inumbent on us to correct the myths and misunderstandings and transform Drug Treatment from a poor joke to something meaningful. A new kind of user activism is urgently required. Better get impeccable and communicating now or kiss your scripts farewell.