Methadone; Killing more people than heroin itself.

 Methadone, once seen as the safe drug to help addicts kick the habit, is now killing more people in Denmark than heroin itself, a survey shows.

Poisoning by methadone, a synthetic narcotic, was blamed for the deaths of 47 people in 2002 against 36 who died from heroin overdoses, the survey in Nordisk Rettsmedisin shows, a Scandinavian legal medicine review.

The drug, popularised some three decades ago, is prescribed by doctors as a controlled substitute for heroin users in detox programs.

Its resale value on the illegal circuit has soared, with addicts buying from other addicts in what has caused a worrisome increase in methadone accidents, the forensic pathologists said.

Researchers Sys Stybe Johansen and Anni Steetoft of the Legal Medicine Institute in Copenhagen found that overall deaths blamed on heroin and morphine had decreased by 33 per cent since 1996 while those blamed on methadone had increased in the same proportion.

The latest police statistics by Denmark's national police meanwhile saw a slight drop last year in deaths from drug overdoses of any kind, at 252 against 258 in 2001 and 140 in 1987.

Denmark, which has some 14,000 drug addicts according to official estimates, most living in the capital region, has one of Europe's highest death rates due to drug consumption.