Call for Tighter Controls After Boy, 2, Dies From Taking Parents’ Methadone

By SHAN ROSS AND JONATHAN LESSWARE

THE death of a two-year-old boy after drinking methadone in his home reignited the debate yesterday on the use of the heroin substitute.

Derek Alexander Doran, from Elphinstone, East Lothian, died after taking the substance, which had been prescribed for his parents, both registered drug addicts.

Lisa Dodds, 25, found her son’s body in his bed in the home she shared with her partner, Derek Doran, 22. The boy was taken to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh where he was pronounced dead. Ms Dodds’ two other children have been taken into care.

The death occurred on 13 December but it was only yesterday the results of a toxicology report emerged. A police investigation is under way and both parents have been questioned by detectives.

They had been prescribed methadone to take at home, in line with government guidelines that leave GPs to look at a user’s circumstances and decide where it should be consumed. But the news provoked an outcry among experts and politicians who said allowing methadone to be taken in the home was placing children at risk.

Annabel Goldie, the leader of the Scottish Tories, said the death highlighted the need for a change of government policy, and she called on ministers to stop “parking” addicts on methadone.

Professor Neil McKeganey, a drugs expert, said too many addicts were prescribed methadone without proper follow-ups to measure its therapeutic benefits.

Last October, Michael McGarrity, three, spent six weeks trapped in a Leith flat with the body of his mother who died from a drugs overdose. Anne-Marie McGarrity, 33, was a heroin addict on a mandatory methadone programme. Five weeks ago, it emerged a girl of 11 had been treated in hospital for the effects of heroin after collapsing at a Glasgow school.

Ms Goldie said: “The Scottish Executive has no control over what’s happening with the prescribing of methadone. We have a desperately worrying situation where there are children in the home with parents who have not been successfully rehabilitated.

“What we need is a shorter reporting grid so that social work and schools are aware of what’s happening in that home. Where children are involved, there is an obligation to ensure their safety.

“Drug and methadone dependency have reached epidemic proportions, with our social services left to pick up the pieces of government policy that lacks the will to tackle the issue head-on.”

Some 20,000 drug addicts – nearly a third of the Scottish total – are on a methadone treatment programme.

Figures from the General Register Office for Scotland show there were 80 methadone-related deaths in 2004, compared with 225 for heroin. The figures for 2003 were 87 and 175 respectively.

The responsibility for ordering supervised consumption of methadone, which mimics the effect of heroin but is less addictive, lies with doctors.

Prof McKeganey, director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research at Glasgow University, said “Where young children are involved, it is an absolute requirement that we know where methadone is stored and how it is consumed. We are talking about households which can go from relative stability to utter chaos in a few hours and where children unavoidably have access to drugs and its paraphernalia.

“The trouble is, the prescribing doctor can prescribe the basis on which the methadone is consumed or how it is stored. But often those prescribing services are not aware of dependent children in the household.”

“We know from research the vast majority of addicts say they want to become drug free, something we are not going to achieve overnight. What we can do however is ensure people are moved off methadone by weaning them off it, reducing the dosages, and setting clear targets so no-one is on it longer than necessary.”

Jack McConnell, the First Minister, said the safety of children with drug addict parents was an “absolute priority”.

A Scottish Executive spokeswoman said: “Different approaches work for different people. Decisions on treatments are for individual patients and their medical professionals.”