The introduction of "heroin clinics" in Switzerland and the Netherlands during the 1990s significantly reduced drug-related crime and other social problems. Now Britain too is considering giving long-term addicts injectable heroin – again.

Back in the 1970s, Britain controlled its heroin problem by registering addicts and allowing doctors to prescribe the drug. But some doctors started prescribing it for cash to unregistered users, and the practice was stopped. The preferred route then became oral methadone, which has its own problems and often does not work.

Meanwhile illicit heroin use grew hugely: Britain had about 400 registered addicts in the 1970s, getting the drug in controlled circumstances: today it has 56,000 registered addicts, on various attempts at treatment (only half a percent are prescribed the drug itself). Meanwhile the total number of users may be 200,000, and of those, many lead chaotic lives, the cost of their habit fuelled by crime.

Today there are fewer than 100 doctors who hold the special Home Office licence required to prescribe heroin. Of these, there are 20 each in the South-East, London and the North-West but only a handful in other regions. Two cheers, then, for the fact that Britain is now to create pilot projects elsewhere – accepting the evidence of Switzerland and the Netherlands, and acknowledging that, while there will always be some bent doctors, driving heroin users to crime just makes matters worse.