PRESCRIPTION methadone is traded for street heroin leaving hundreds like teenager Danielle Scott dead.

DRUG addicts are selling NHS methadone to buy the heroin it’s meant to wean them off.

Hundreds have died taking methadone sold by addicts in a taxpayer-funded cycle of misery.

Victims include angel-faced Danielle Scott, 17, who was fed the heroin substitute by a dealer who got gallons of it on prescription.

Gallons of NHS-funded methadone are being sold in a deadly black market which costs hundreds of lives every year.

Almost half of all drug deaths in Scotland last year were linked to the heroin substitute – and most of the casualties had not been prescribed methadone.

A Record investigation has discovered addicts routinely sell their free prescription methadone to buy more of the heroin which it is supposed to wean them off.

The buyers are often inexperienced users who, unused to the drug, overdose and die.

A shocking 275 out of 584 drug deaths in Scotland last year were linked to methadone.

And our investigation revealed how easy it is to get supplies of the deadly opioid from street dealers.

In the addiction blackspot of Possilpark, Glasgow, we were able to buy 50ml of the green liquid – in an NHS medicine bottle – within half an hour.

As he handed it over, the dealer warned: “Be careful with that. If you’re not used to it, it’ll kill you.”

The going street rate for the class A opioid is just £1 per 10ml, with the drug generally changing hands in quantities of 50ml and over.

Carole Hunter, one of the NHS’s most senior drug specialists in Scotland, yesterday admitted that most of the people killed by methadone were not on a prescription for the drug.

She said: “Most of the drug deaths on methadone have been people who were not in treatment.”

Ms Hunter, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s lead addiction pharmacist, added: “We don’t know where they get the methadone. We presume that it is illicit methadone that has been diverted.”

Methadone costs the taxpayer £36million a year to dispense to around 22,000 addicts in Scotland.

But as well as failing in its main aim of getting addicts off heroin, the methadone programme is also shockingly easy to abuse.

Addicts who take the heroin substitute under supervision in chemist shops often sell it on later after holding it in their mouth, then spitting it out. The practice – known as “spit-meth” – gets them money to pay for heroin.

Thousands of addicts are also given 100ml of methadone home with them in a bottle on a Saturday to take on Sundays when chemists are shut.

Addicts who live in remote areas or who convince their GP that they can be trusted are given a week’s supply at a time.

And others can get large quantities simply by telling their doctor they are going away for work or on holiday.

Many addicts we spoke to admitted that they will often sell their methadone to buy a fix of heroin. They just peel off the label on the NHS bottle with their name on it, before selling it on.

The daughter of one addict, who didn’t want to be named, rang the Record to tell us how her mum picks up a 700ml supply of methadone from a chemist in Ayrshire every week – and sells it to a dealer immediately.

She said: “My mum has been an addict for more than 15 years. She is given bottles of methadone every week – a 500ml bottle and a 200ml bottle – which she doesn’t even take.

“She just sells them to her dealer in order to buy more heroin. It breaks my heart to see what the drugs are doing to her and it makes me so angry to think that the NHS is effectively helping funding her heroin habit.

“So far as I know, her dealer will sell on the methadone when he can’t get heroin or when he has addicts at his door so desperate they will pay for anything to stop them rattling.

“The system is completely out of control. The doctors must be so naive when they are writing prescriptions for this stuff thinking it is helping people quit drugs.”

Methadone addict Vera Rooney, 46, from Possilpark, said: “I don’t use heroin now, but loads of people sell on their methadone to buy heroin. Especially on a Saturday, when everyone gets their Sunday dose, there will be people outside the chemist asking if you want to sell your meth.”

Anne McDermott, 50, from Edinburgh, has a 28-year-old son on the methadone programme.

She said: “The Government need to wake up to what is happening. It’s just silly to think that methadone isn’t going to be traded for other drugs.”

Despite the sale of methadone – which carries a possible life sentence – being so widespread, the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency admitted yesterday they had never been involved in any prosecutions over the drug.

We asked the SCDEA how much illegal methadone they estimated was in circulation and how many people had been convicted of selling it.

A spokeswoman said: “We have not been looking at the methadone market in isolation so we don’t have any figures at the moment.

“It is something we are going to be doing on the back of the coverage of increasing deaths on methadone.

“The SCDEA has never been involved in any prosecutions for methadone.”

When we asked the Crown Office for figures on prosecutions, their spokeswoman said: “Your request falls outside the bounds of a media enquiry and will need to be submitted for a formal response to our Freedom of Information team.”

Labour MSP Graeme Pearson – the former head of the SCDEA – last night said the Record’s revelations made a review of the methadone programme all the more necessary.

He said: “If many of the people dying as a result of methadone didn’t have legitimate access to it, that is definitely something the authorities should be looking at.

“I would be surprised if there would be many convictions for selling methadone.

“When I was involved in policing, the number of people dying from methadone was much smaller.

“Now the practice of spitting out methadone and selling it on to buy other drugs is common. There will also be methadone stolen from different points in the supply chain.”

Donald Ross, of addiction charity Teen Challenge, said: “This just shows how out of control and counter-productive the methadone programme has become.

“Addicts who need real help are having their habit funded by the state. They are being given the opportunity to buy heroin by selling methadone the Government give them.

“If there has ever been clear evidence that the system needs to be reviewed, this is it.”

Teenager Danielle Scott was killed by a deadly methadone dose

TROUBLED teenager Danielle Scott was killed by just 20ml of methadone given to her by addict Peter Meaney – who had walked out of a chemist’s shop with a bumper 1580ml two-week supply.

Danielle, 17, was found dead at Meaney’s home in Edinburgh in 2005 after sneaking out of a care home in the city to meet him.

The police investigation into her death discovered Meaney, then 26, had been selling methadone to a network of contacts.

Danielle’s mum Lorraine, from Riggend, Lanarkshire, said: “I think it is shocking that Meaney was allowed to walk out of a chemist with one-and-a-half litres of that drug.

“The police told me the next morning he had less than 100ml left. He was obviously selling it to other people but I think he gave it to Danielle for free because he was trying to lure her in.”

In 2006, Meaney was jailed for three years for culpable homicide after admitting feeding Danielle alcohol and the heroin substitute.

He was sent to an open prison after less than a year and is now free. He got the massive stock of methadone by saying he was starting a labouring job away from Edinburgh.

Lorraine said: “I think it is great that the Record is demanding the Government finally do something about methadone.

“If the Government are giving this stuff out, they at least need to take responsibility for the fact that so much of it is ending up on the black market.”

The Record tracked Meaney down to a flat in Dalkeith, Midlothian, yesterday.

He claimed to be drug-free, but his eyes were glazed and his speech was rambling and often incoherent.

He insisted: “She died because she was drinking” and refused to make any apology to Danielle’s family.

What we want:

THE Daily Record is calling for an urgent inquiry into Scotland’s £36million-a-year methadone scandal.

The heroin substitute is supposed to wean addicts off drugs.

But in a series of hard-hitting reports and investigations, we’ve revealed how chemists are coining in millions to dispense it, while no one knows how many addicts actually quit. And we’ve discovered how:

• No records are kept for how long the 22,000 users have been on methadone.
• No targets are set for how long people should be given the drug.
• No figures are kept for how many take it while continuing to use heroin.

Today, we reveal how addicts are illegally selling on their methadone with apparent impunity – because it is not a priority for police or the courts, even though the illicit trade is leading to multiple deaths.

Politicians, drugs campaigners and those in the medical profession are now joining our fight for a full and urgent audit of the programme before even more money is spent – and even more people die.

If you have a story about methadone or your life has been touched by it in some way, please call our newsdesk on 0141 309 3251.

Source: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/nhs-funds-methadone-black-market-1301693