UK. The Merseyside Experiment: Will UK Recall Its Heroin-Prescribing History?
UK. The Merseyside Experiment: Will UK Recall Its Heroin-Prescribing History?
(…) Britain’s prohibitionist drug policies are now so deeply entrenched that it’s hard to believe it was long a world leader in what would now be called safe supply.
From 1926, doctors were legally allowed to prescribe pharmaceutical heroin (diamorphine) and other opiates to patients with dependencies. This followed the publication of a landmark report by Sir Humphrey Rolleston, former president of the Royal College of Physicians and chair of the government Committee on Morphine and Heroin Addiction.
The Rolleston Report framed addiction as an illness and established a framework that placed primary responsibility for it with the medical profession. It allowed doctors to prescribe maintenance doses of drugs to those for whom withdrawal wasn’t feasible. (Filter, USA, 27.01.2026)
https://filtermag.org/merseyside-uk-heroin-prescribing-policy/