Chemists rake in millions for handing out methadone

Twenty-two chemists paid over £2m between them to give drug to addicts.

Scores of chemists are raking in six-figure sums to dish out methadone to drug addicts.

The Sunday Post has learned almost £19 million a year of taxpayers’ cash is paid to chains and small independents for distributing the over-the-counter heroin substitute.

This is despite long-held concerns over its effectiveness at weaning people off drugs.

A staggering 22 pharmacy owners are being paid more than £100,000 each for methadone services.

The highest earner was Boots who were handed £3.9m of public money in 2012. Its owner recently reported annual pre-tax profits of £973m.

Lloyds Pharmacy came next with a claim of £3.6m followed by the Co-operative Group at £739,000.

Almost 1,200 individual shops benefited from the policy, at an average of £16,000 each.

These amounts only include the sums pharmacists receive for dispensing methadone and do not take into account staff costs and other overheads.

The highest earning individual shop was Denis Houlihan’s in Glasgow’s tough Possilpark.

It claimed back £117,000 which brings the total amount the shop has collected to almost £1 million over seven years.

The businessman’s eight other premises in Glasgow were paid amounts ranging between £1,200 and £69,000 during 2012. Critics last night blasted the expenditure.

Tory health spokesman Jackson Carlaw said: “The increase in payments relating to methadone is extremely concerning.

“Instead of efforts being made to get people off drugs completely, too many are being parked on the drug for years.

“This is of no benefit to the individual, and comes at a greater cost to the taxpayer.”

The methadone programme was launched in Scotland in 1999 in a bid to remove addicts from the clutches of organised crime.

It was also intended to provide a halfway house to complete rehabilitation.

The theory is addicts will take decreasing amounts of methadone until they are drug-free.

But many claim they are left on methadone for decades without being offered any rehabilitation.

That has led to claims the methadone programme has only served to fuel a whole new addiction problem.

There are around 22,000 people on the methadone programme. This compares to 18,000 in 2004 and 15,800 in 2002.

Over the same period the annual cost of prescribing the drug has more than doubled.

Scotland also has more methadone users per head of population than every other country in Europe and at least four times that of Norway, Denmark, Germany and Holland.

Former government advisor Professor Neil McKeganey has been a long-time critic of the policy, arguing “the system is addicted to supplying methadone”.

He said: “There needs to be a full review so we know exactly how many people are on methadone programmes and how many have come off them.

“Two years is the maximum anyone should be on a programme. After that there needs to be an intensive review of their treatment.”

Jackson Carlaw added: “The Scottish Government has to move away completely from a policy of handing out methadone on an industrial scale and instead divert the millions spent every year on treatment services which will actually help drug users to kick the habit.”

Elspeth Weir of Community Pharmacy Scotland, who represent chemist’s shop owners, said: “When it’s described as ‘earning’, that money pays for the product that is dispensed and the pharmacist and his staff to do the work.

“The pharmacists source and buy the methadone, which is then dispensed in response to a prescription from a doctor.

“The reimbursement price is monitored and set in line with the purchase price.

“The fees that are paid are negotiated in each health board, who ask the chemists to disperse the methadone.”