ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Looking back from our vantage point in the twenty-first century on the development of the treatment of drug users in the UK, there are a number of striking aspects of the British approach which are distinctive and have fascinated and perplexed commentators at home and abroad. Figures for 1999 indicate that about 30,000 drug misusers presented to treatment services in a six month period. If we go back forty years, Home Office statistics for 1956 reported 333 addicts in the country (currently the total population of patients of a local drug service). As a recent report observed, it is not just the character of the drug problem that changes like the tide ebbing and flowing; it is also that the sea level has risen dramatically. Yet despite this massive increase in drug misuse over the last forty years there have been features of British drug treatment that have endured. It is the features of this core response which have been dubbed the “British Experience” or “British System”.
