Withdrawal from heroin is a trivial matter

We live in Keynesian times: the answer to the economic problems created by a mountain of debt frittered away on trifles is clearly a whole mountain range of debt frittered away on trifles. In the circumstances it is good to know that a judge has done his bit to stimulate the general improvidence — sorry, the British economy. He has awarded £11,000 each to three prisoners in Winchester Prison who underwent withdrawal from heroin without benefit of further doses of heroin or of methadone and other heroin substitutes. It was against their human rights, he said.

This is indeed odd. It is doubtful whether anyone ever dies from withdrawal of opiates alone. In reviewing the medical literature between 1875 and 1968, the doctors and researchers Glaser and Ball were unable to find a single case of death from withdrawal of opiates, despite the fact that the literature covered many thousands of cases.

Indeed, such withdrawal is medically triv-ial, unlike that from alcohol and barbiturates (and sometimes even benzodiazepines such as valium). Let me quote Niesink, Jaspers, Kornet and van Ree’s book, Drugs of Abuse and Addiction: Neurobehavioral Toxicology: ‘[Withdrawal] is time limited… and not life-threatening, thus can be easily controlled by reassurance, personal attention and general nursing care without any need for pharmacotherapy.’

By contrast, 2,845 people died of methadone poisoning in Great Britain between 1996 and 2005. In 2006, 241 died of methadone, and 713 of heroin or morphine poisoning. In 2007, the figures were 325 and 829 respectively. In Dublin, more people die of methadone poisoning than of heroin poisoning.

I repeat, no one dies of opiate withdrawal. I might add also that doctors have a very long history of treating the trivial condition of withdrawal from opiates in a dangerous, indeed fatal fashion.

It goes without saying that we are all furious at Mr Putin’s treatment of Georgia, but few of us realise that the drug addicts of the country whose president brokered a ceasefire between Russia and Georgia — France — have caused far more harm to the population of that country than Mr Putin’s Russia.