In 1924, following concerns about the treatment of addicts by doctors, Smith Whitaker suggested to the Home Office who suggested to the Ministry of Health that the Rolleston Committee be formed under the chairmanship of Sir Humphry Rolleston to[1] "... consider and advise as to the circumstances, if any, in which the supply of morphine and heroin (including preparations containing morphine and heroin) to persons suffering from addiction to those drugs may be regarded as medically advisable, and as to the precautions which it is desirable that medical practitioners administering or prescribing morphine or heroin should adopt for the avoidance of abuse, and to suggest any administrative measures that seem expedient for securing observance of such precautions".[2]
The committee recommended that the gradual reduction in the amount of drug consumed was the best method of treatment and there there should be no restrictions on the doctors allowed to prescribe dangerous addictive drugs or their methods of treatment or the quantity they could supply, although authority to supply could be withdrawn from over prescribing doctors.
They allowed doctors to prescribe addictive drugs in a controlled manner, in the same way as they supplied other drugs. This became known as the 'British System' of drug supply and control. [3]
They allowed addicts who could not be cured to be maintained on a, usually small, amount of the drug [4]
They said that addiction was a middle class phenomenon, so criminal sanctions were unnecessary, as few criminal or lower class addicts were known.
They added that addiction to such drugs as heroin or morphine was a minor problem in Great Britain.[5]