Medications in Drug Treatment – Tackling the Risks to Children

This report examines cases where children have died or come to harm from ingesting Opioid Substitution Treatment (OST) medicines prescribed to help people overcome drug addiction. There have been 17 Serious Case Reviews involving the ingestion of OST drugs by children in the last five years alone, plus potentially more incidents that don’t reach that level of inquiry. The information presented in this report highlights that not only are such events not isolated, but that they have happened with quite depressing regularity. The report then makes recommendations on how to prevent these incidents from happening again.