 Addiction to opiates was rare in the 1920s and was mostly limited to either middle-class people who had easy access due to their profession, or people who had become addicted as a side effect of medical treatment.In the 1950s and 1960s a small number of doctors contributed to an alarming increase in the number of drug-addicted people in the U.K. through excessive prescribing—the U.K. switched to more restrictive drug legislation as a result.However, the British government is again moving towards a consideration of heroin prescription as a legitimate component of the National Health Service (NHS).