CORONER Andr Rebello's verdict on fatally-overdosed East Lancashire drug addict Andrew Burrows was that his death was an accident - but one that need not have happened.
Mr Rebello is rightly worried about the amounts of prescribed heroin-substitute, methadone, that are available.
Over-availability leads to two things.
One is a black market in the drug.
And the other is overdose cases like that of tragic Andrew Burrows.
Why, asks the coroner, cannot doctors prescribe daily doses of methadone to people being treated for heroin abuse, so that they only receive the amount they need?
Why not indeed.
For it is an abuse of common sense to, first of all, encourage the expansion of the trade in deadly drugs.
And it is madness, surely, to give vulnerable people the means for them or others to lethally overdose.
The medical profession must answer the question that Mr Rebello quite rightly puts.
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