Appeal To Aid Drug Addicts In U.K.

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31585, 24 January 1968, Page 4

Appeal To Aid Drug Addicts In U.K.

(Special Crspdt. N.Z.P.A ) LONDON, Jan. 23. Professor Francis Camps, one of Britain’s Home Office pathologists, has appealed for voluntary help to set up independent centres to advise and treat drug addicts. The necessity for such centres, he says, has been shown by experience of the emergency clinic set up in the crypt of St Anne’s Church, Soho, last week-end. The Association for Prevention of Addiction, Ltd, of which Professor Camps is president, is putting pressure on the Ministry of Health to open a 24-hour emergency centre. It hopes that Charing

Cross Hospital, which opened.’ a 12-hour-a-day. five-day-a- < week treatment centre yesterday, will run a 24-hour service i within the next three weeks. ' According to “The Times,” j Mr Alan Bestic, the associa- ■ tion’s press officer, says that the in-patient centres in hos- ■ pitals in London are grossly i overcrowded, work spasmodically, and have a 14-day waiting list The association was also ap-l a pealing to church dignitories for space and funds to set up temporary dormitories for e homeless addicts, e Professor Camps has dei, scribed his scheme as a “holding operation” designed to i- give addicts heroin until such >f time as they can undergo s treatment, or until there are e organised treatment centres, o Volunteer doctors would give y addicts regular daily doses g suitable to their needs and

.“withdraw”’ addicts if they consented. He has spoken also of the dangers of illegal supplies. “Once you get an illegal supply you get rackets. What we want to stop are the Mafia in this country, and what we want to stop at this stage is the black market." The St Anne’s clinic had been visited by about 100 addicts whose supply had been cut off abruptly by the absence of their doctors. Twenty-five were given prescriptions of volunteer doctors, the rest were referred to other doctors. The emergency clinic had shown that addiction to drugs other than heroin and cocaine was increasing. The association was pressing the ministry to include these in the Dangerbus Drugs Act so that their distribution would be similarly restricted.