Voucher incentives for drug users

[UnquietDad]

how nice

£200 for staying "clean" for a 12-week period.

What are they going to give me for having had nothing of any illegal variety since that one spliff at university, then? I make that nearly 20 years.

This is like the teacher giving the bad boy in the class sweets for being good for the day (true story) which made DD, quite justly, ask, "what do I get for being good all the time?"

£16.50 ( upto) ** per week for ensuring that they attend treatment and support classes - the vouchers it says can be used towards "evening classes, transport or utility bills. One pilot is limiting the rewards to luncheon vouchers."

before reading the linked article - which i rarely do btw i was going to agree with you and go all daily mail

but actually thinking about it - am not seeing that its altogether different than the doctors writing a script for niquitin patches ( which prob cost more)

Do you really mean to compare a heroin addict to someone who experiments with a spliff at University? Do you really think heroin addicts are that way out of choice? Don't you think that they would stop if they could? All the heroin addicts I know are either mentally ill or had truly unimaginably awful childhoods with physical and sexual abuse.
It really is in society's best interest to get them to stop doing heroin and if £200 manages to do that, I suspect it's the cheapest method out there. Unfortunately, I doubt that it's that simple.

Thank goodness for that. For a minute I was thinking I couldn't even kick up a bit of controversy after midnight...

Ah, but I'm in Los Angeles and running 8 hours earlier than you lot, so still full of controversial energy.

Don't want to get into an argument, but are heroin addicts held down and a needle forced into their vein, or do they choose to take heroin in the first place themselves?

I don't know, it depends on how you define "choice." Is a mentally ill person making a rational choice when they use heroin to stop the voices or pull them out of severe dehabilitating depression? Is a teenager who has been repeatedly abused by their parents throughout their childhood making a rational choice when they use heroin to escape their misery?

I don't think you can compare the average heroin addict with the uni student who experiments with a bit of pot and ecstasy. The reasons and choices are completely different and therefore have to be dealt with in a completely different way. The uni student can generally be considered to be influenceable by rational arguments. I don't think this is true for most heroin addicts even before they become addicts.