The contentious heroin substitute, methadone tends to have an improving impact upon the long-term survival of drug abusers, according to academics.

A reading depicted that the treatment lessened the occurrence of drug use and led to a plunge in the risk of death by almost 13% every year.

But the findings as well depicted that the drug can extend the number of years given the users continue to inject heroin.

Injecting can kill if one overdoses oneself and the transmission of HIV and hepatitis. A most recent outburst of anthrax in Scotland caused 13 deaths amongst injecting users.

The study had been conducted by the universities of Edinburgh, Bristol and Cambridge.

Roy Robertson, a GP, who played the leader of the study at the University of Edinburgh, said that a lot of injectors on a prescription will carry on with occasional injecting, despite the fact that it may be unwilling to acknowledge this to their doctor for fear of a disciplinary response.

The research has shown that in spite of this, they still gain substantial health benefits from their prescription.

Recommendations that methadone prescribing should be slashed or restricted to short-term are evidently absent and would lead to inferior health for drug injectors.