Addicts to get free heroin in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal

[anitram]

From here.

A small group of heroin addicts in Toronto will be given the drug for free for a year as part of a controversial study ? the first of its kind in North America ? set to begin next year.

Addicts will be able to get the drug and inject it three times a day at an office of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, near Spadina Ave. and College St., as part of an $8 million federally funded trial to see whether it improves their health and cuts crime.

As part of the trial, they will receive counselling from doctors, nurses and social workers. At the end of the first year, they will be weaned off the drugs and offered methadone or withdrawal counselling for another year.

The study, which will also take place in Vancouver and Montreal, has not yet received final approval from Health Canada because the City of Vancouver must first approve a storefront clinic in the drug-infested downtown eastside to dispense the drugs.

The Toronto study group plans to give out the drugs, which must be injected on site, at the centre's main building on Russell St. but has not yet received final approval, said Dr. David Marsh, the centre's clinical director for addiction medicine.

It already runs many outpatient programs for addicts at the site.

The program has not been formally announced, but word leaked out because Vancouver residents had to be told about the rezoning application for the storefront clinic.

While many support the clinic, they are opposed to its location ? across the street from a day-care centre and down the street from an elementary school.

Under the study, 210 addicts in the three cities ? a third of them in Toronto ? would be given heroin seven days a week. Another 210 would be given methadone and 50 would get hydromorphone, or Dilaudid, a drug normally used to treat pain that has an effect similar to heroin.

The addicts must have twice failed to kick the habit in methadone treatment programs.

The trial program has been under discussion and subject to rigorous ethical study for the past five years, said Dr. Martin Schechter of the University of British Columbia, the study's principal investigator.

"It's a very, very complex endeavour," he said. "There were a number of approvals we had to obtain and are still in the process of obtaining," he said. But it's important to realize the drug is going only to people already addicted to heroin, he added.

"These are people buying the drug on the black market, sharing dirty needles and spending most of their time in criminal activity like robbery and prostitution in order to pay for their habit," Schechter said.

"If we can break this cycle of criminal activity, hopefully we can stabilize their lives and get them the counselling they desperately need."

Similar studies in Switzerland and the Netherlands found that addicts made improvements in their quality of life and employment, engaged in less criminal activity and improved their over-all health, he said.

Methadone dependency is the only known effective treatment for heroin addicts, but about half of them don't respond to it.

Peter Vamos, a psychologist and executive director of the Portage Organization, a network of drug treatment centres in Canada, said the problem with such experimental programs is they fail to deliver the counselling addicts need.

"They're less likely to overdose and they have clean needles, but as far as getting them any real help, they don't really seem to have that," he said.

When an uproar broke out in the Ontario Legislature a few years ago over sending addicts to the United States for treatment, the government vowed to stop the practice and set up treatment programs at home, Vamos said.

"They haven't invested in treatment and they're not sending them out of the province either," he said. "Over the last several years, treatment has not been a high priority."

But Richard Garlick, director of communications for the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, said the study is "a very solid, well-thought out project. This is just another step in what is becoming a wide variety of approaches to addiction.

"It used to be one size fits all, but now we're realizing some people respond to one kind of treatment and others don't," he said. "These are people who have failed to respond to the only other major approach ? methadone dependence. This is a sincere attempt to help those people."

 

[Dreadsox]

I am still thinking on this. I thouhgt I would bump it, for fear it would disappear.

 

[BVS]

Well from first reaction it sounds like a good idea. They are in a controlled environment, almost no way of overdosing, and no dirty needles. AND they are recieving counciling. And this isn't just any addict these are ones who've tried and can't, twice.

But what I wonder is how they legally get away giving out a drug that is illegal? I mean where are they scoring it? Is this normal for the government to have their own stash?

 

[bonoman]

But what I wonder is how they legally get away giving out a drug that is illegal? I mean where are they scoring it? Is this normal for the government to have their own stash?

I dont know about herion, but we do have Flin Flon, Manitoba where the country grows its weed. it is grown in under ground old bomb shelters.

Herion can be easyly made with painkiller drugs. I'm sure that this asspect would be one of the issues it is trying to pass.

 

[DrTeeth]

Maybe the heroin they use was intercepted by the police at airports and stuff. I think this is a great idea even though I'm not sure what's different about this study compared to the ones in Switzerland and the Netherlands. I think these have proven that this works so why put it in some sort of experimental phase or as a part of a 'controversial study'?

 

[Rono]

Well. not only they get high for free but the real progress here that the adicts are free from presure of scoring drugs. They do not commit crimes or do not sell themselfs to lowlive scum who want to fuck them for 5 dollars. This addicted people get in sillent waters and starting to get a 'normal' life and even start to think about getting clean. a aducation ore are searching for work.

I think it is a good idea,....

 

[FizzingWhizzbees]

But what I wonder is how they legally get away giving out a drug that is illegal? I mean where are they scoring it? Is this normal for the government to have their own stash?

I would guess that they'll be given diamorphine, which is the medical name for heroin. It's a drug which is relatively commonly prescribed so the government would just buy it from the pharmaceutical companies which manufacture it.

At least that's what I'd guess.

 

[Dreadsox]

I find it troublesome that I have such a hard time comingup with responses to questions about drug use but I will talk foreign affairs all day long if I could.

 

[BAW]

I'm too personally involved to give an objective opinion.

 

[Dreadsox]

Maybe that is what my problem is too.

 

[spinninghead77]

Hmmmnnn, part of me agree's with you all that this is a good thing. It would be nice to see people not having to steal, fight, kill, and sell themeselves to get their fix.

However, the location suggested in Toronto is pretty much on the U of T campus, and I don't think that's a good thing. It's a pretty 'clean' area. If they are going to set something like this up it should be in the area's of town that are already full of addicts, etc. Yes, it's good to get the addicts out of the 'bad' neighborhoods, but I don't think introducing Heroin to a new neighborhood, let alone one full of vibrant, educated, young people, is the best suggestion.

 

[anitram]

It is not really on the campus like they make it sound.

It's at the corner of College and Spadina, which is the very limit of the campus, it's the most extreme southwest point, and it feels more like it's a part of Chinatown than the university itself. I think they're doing it there because that's where the centre for addiction is, so that they won't have to relocate any staff for the duration of the program.

 

[Salome]

I think I support plans like this because it does help prevent criminal activities from addicts

I do understand the moral conflict though
this allows the government to hand out substances which - in the end - are not healthy
we are sort of helping people to destroy their body this way
addicts would only really be helped if they would beat their addiction
but efforts in achieving this have been so unsuccesfull that I do feel this is the best solution for now

 

[DrTeeth]

I think I support plans like this because it does help prevent criminal activities from addicts

I do understand the moral conflict though
this allows the government to hand out substances which - in the end - are not healthy
we are sort of helping people to destroy their body this way
addicts would only really be helped if they would beat their addiction
but efforts in achieving this have been so unsuccesfull that I do feel this is the best solution for now

I guess the idea is that these people now can focus completely on beating their addiction instead of wondering where their next shot will come from. But I have to admit I'm not sure whether people have actually overcome their addiction in the Dutch and Swiss studies.

 

[Keocmb]

I don't understand what they're trying to prove with this. Letting drug addicts have free drugs for a year? Is that really necessary?

I see no point...

 

[DrTeeth]

The point has been explained in this thread and in the article posted by anitram:

• less criminal activity;
• controlled drug usage with clean needles etc. So less overdosages and diseases;
• a better chance for the drug users to battle their addiction.

I think this also a good opportunity to get rid of the idea that, being addicted is a crime an sich and that these people, in a way, are victims too.

 

[Keocmb]

 

[Angela Harlem]

There's other ways to achieve those goals.

 

[kobayashi]

I think this is a great idea even though I'm not sure what's different about this study compared to the ones in Switzerland and the Netherlands. I think these have proven that this works so why put it in some sort of experimental phase or as a part of a 'controversial study'?

1st time in north america = 1st time ever in world for most north americans.