Heroin has been prescribed in the UK in the treatment of addiction for nearly a century. However, despite international fascination with this practice, it is only rarely employed by doctors in the UK – to less than 2% of addicts in treatment in the mid-1990s. The history of changing professional attitudes to, and use of, heroin prescribing over the 20th century is described. Particular attention is paid to the period since the mid-1960s when a new modern-day drug problem emerged with young disenfranchised heroin injectors appearing in Britain for the first time, and to the post-HIV debate with its wide public health consideration, the urgent need to reduce needle-sharing and the accumulating evidence of multiple benefits from oral methadone maintenance programmes. New data on the extent of heroin prescribing in the UK in the mid-1990s are summarised.

Keywords:
Heroin prescribing, Addiction, British
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© 1996 S. Karger AG, Basel
1996
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