Oh those poor suffering pharmacists...

[garstang]

The Camden New Journal, reknowned for taking a particularly bigoted view of drug users, published this article two weeks ago:
http://www.camdennewjournal.com/difficult-swallow-truth-drugs-war-that%E2%80%99s-being-lost
I shot off a letter which wasn't published the following week despite having an assurance from the letters editor. After a bit of persuasion they've published (edited of course) this week. It's not yet online but should be here:
http://www.camdennewjournal.com/letters
later today. The text is:

Methadone Stigmatised
John Gulliver's article appears to be part of the (Dickens) bicentennial with Gulliver providing the lost ending to Dickens's final novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood with the opium dealers of Cloisterham being replaced by chemists of Camden Town. Gulliver fails to mention the increased fee the chemist gets for daily pick up, rather than a single pick up of a week or more, and the increased fee for supervised consumption. Chemists are not coerced to supply supervised methadone. Methadone users are stigmatised a great deal. Gulliver himself stigmatises them by referring to the dirty world of the chemist and its surrounds. This wouldn't be said of the numerous public houses and corner stores which sell state-sanctioned addictive substances.

Peter Simonson

A small victory I guess but part of a bigger challenge to the stigmatisation of the use of methadone and other substances.

Peter

[Jim]

Hi Garstang

you forgot to mention the controlled drug dispensing fee that they get on top of the normal prescription fee.  It was £1.29 per dispense for methadone last time I heard.

[OP8S]

I've commented, whether it ever see's the light of day or not is in the hands of the moderators, if they are renowned for such negative views on the subject of people currently in treatment & using substitute medications then I doubt if it will. You can but try eh ?
Has your letter been published Peter ? You could maybe post the link if / when it does & we can comment again.

[sapphire]

Some pharmacists are very good, but you always get some look down their nose at us "dirty junkies", if they feel that way perhaps they shouldn't dispense it, or perhaps then they'd miss the huge payout they get for doing meth and sub scripts. Twats! 

[sapphire]

I've also posted some comments, but it said they must be "moderated" so I doubt they'll actually show up!

[froude]

JOHN GULLIVER,where do i start,firstly im offended by the way its wrote"Daily Fix" is that how he see's it, as a fix of Methadone,no wonder Methadone is getting a bad wrap at the moment when you have journalists writing about things they NO nothing about.So if i went into the Chemist John Gulliver uses in Camden just by looking at me he would know im picking up my Methadone,Antidepressants,benzo's etc,WOW!! John you should be on Britain's got talent.As for Chemists,you get good ones and shit ones ,what you have to remember is they get paid for it, dispensing "a phial containing green sickly looking stuff that she gulped down"Yeah John you gulp it down or i could throw it over you,but as you said id rather pull a funny face than waste it on you.All the best Froude

[nikki09]

We've gotta a gr8 pharmacist & it makes life so much easier especially as we've been on & off daily pick up & had to take our twin boys in since they were young. They & the rest of the staff have always made us feel like human beings, chatted to our boys, even offered  to write a letter on my partners behalf when he was being pulled off his script saying his symptoms were inhumane. We've had a few knobby locums like the one who wouldn't touch our bottles after we'd had supervised consumption & made us stick them in a plastic bag lmao what a pratt , you gotta laugh or you'll cry Anyway big up to the good chemists & sorry 4any1 out there who suffers from ignorance, from any1. They're the ones with the problem