Today’s Telegraph splashes on the news that the NHS is running out of heroin: Chiron, the firm that supplies the NHS, has suspended production while it tries to sort out problems with the flu vaccine it makes. Apparently the NHS gets through 640,000 ampoules of the stuff every month.
But, of course, the Telegraph can’t say that the NHS depends on heroin. Instead, it explains that “Thousands of patients with cancer who are approaching the end of their lives depend on diamorphine for effective pain relief. It is also used to treat heroin addicts.” Diamorphine is heroin. That’s the point. That’s why it is used to treat heroin addicts. This, surely, is political correctness gone mad, and at the Telegraph of all places. Bah! Humbug! Merry Christmas to you all.
This is symptomatic of the strange unwillingness to address the facts of drugs and their use. Not many people would willingly contemplate the fact that herion is the first drug one would receive in the event of a heart attack. Or the first drug after heavy surgery – I spent two weeks on a heroin pump after spinal surgery.
This whole twisted attitude culminates in half-baked ventures like the “War on Drugs” which, much like the all-new half-baked “War on Terrorism”, has to invent its own enemies. PC is relatively new; what the Telegraph is doing has been going on for decades.
“Diamorphine is heroin. That
I know, I should have wrapped it in quotes. But that’s what the Telegraph said.