ABSTRACT
Community pharmacy has long been an important part of the addictions treatment response in the UK. The substance misuse field has seen many changes over the last two decades, including the way the focus on treatment of drug users has oscillated between primary and secondary care. However, regardless of where responsibility has rested for treatment, responsibility for the delivery of medication to patients has rested almost exclusively with the community pharmacist. With the exception of a few specialist drug clinics which dispense methadone and other drugs on-site, community pharmacists in the UK dispense all other prescriptions for drugs such as methadone, often in daily instalments, and more recently with supervised consumption at the pharmacy. Furthermore, as with most areas of health care, community pharmacy has also seen many changes, and in the last 15 years community pharmacists have been willing to involve themselves in an increasingly wide range of services such as needle and syringe exchange, dispensing methadone prescriptions, and most recently in the supervision of administration of methadone on the pharmacy premises.
