News and other Busyness

Heroin ‘Drug Of Choice’ In Prisons

Squall 13, Summer 1996, pg. 7.

Heroin is becoming the drug of choice in Britain’s prisons due to the Government’s new drug testing policy, according to research published in June.

Figures published in Drug Link, the journal of the institute of drug dependence, show the number of prisoners testing positive for heroin increasing with the number of positive cannabis tests dropping.

It was widely predicted that prisoners would move to heroin when the Government introduced its mandatory drug testing policy last year in a “get tough” policy on prison drug use.

Cannabis stays in the body for a much longer period than heroin. With a positive drugs test, or refusal, leading to longer sentences, a prisoner has less chance of being caught with heroin in the blood stream.

The new regulations mean ten per cent of prisoners in each prison must be randomly tested for drugs each month.

“The irony is that testing may actually be creating a drug problem in prisons where there was not one before,” Drug Link say.