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Heroin Maintenance Trial to Begin in Canada
June 8, 2009

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News Summary

Buoyed by research showing that giving heroin to addicts in a controlled setting can reduce crime and improve health, Canadian researchers are set to launch a trial heroin-maintenance project in Montreal and Vancouver, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported June 2.

The three-year Study to Assess Longer-term Opioid Medication Effectiveness (SALOME) trial will offer heroin in pill and injectable form to a group of 200 heroin addicts.

The project is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, a part of Health Canada, and has the tacit approval of Canada's Conservative government. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has worked to shut down Vancouver's Insite supervised-injection site for opiate users, but the SALOME project takes the harm-reduction concept a step further by actually providing heroin to addicts.

Researchers led by Michael Krausz of the University of British Columbia hope to determine whether medically prescribed heroin can be used safely and effectively to treat addiction, and whether users will accept the drug in pill form. Results of heroin maintenance will be compared to a group of subjects who will instead receive the opioid hydromorphone, aka Dilaudid.

The treatment group will consist of heroin addicts who have not responded to other treatment interventions.

SALOME is a followup to the North American Opiate Medication Initiative, also a project of Health Canada.

COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE:

Posted by Orange County Detox on 10 Jun 09 02:12 AM EDT
This is a risky proposition. First of all, any opiate use for an extended period of time will degrade a person's ability to feel compassion, empathy and eventually love for his or her fellow person. How can any government condone the systematic dehumnization of an entire group of people ie opiate addicts? This is the exact reason that so many medical professionals should stay out of the rehabilitation field. Because doctors unlike ego neutral people are searching for an answer based in science that minimizes risk associated with behavior. But at what cost? Doctors cannot quantify compassion, empathy and love so they leave it out of their reasoning when making a recommendation. And without those three qualities what is left of a man or a woman if they cannot love. What good is the answer if it disables your ability to be a person!

Posted by Gene on 10 Jun 09 12:18 PM EDT
The drug substitution is not aimed to treat addiction, it is meant to maintain addiction: less risky substance is used to mask euphoric effect. I suppose it will be as effective as a methadone maintenance program.

Posted by Richard Goldberg on 15 Jun 09 11:44 AM EDT
In 1955 England "legalized" addiction to heroin, recognizing it as a disease and allowing doctors to treat it by dispensing heroin to those who were diagnosed and registered as addicted. Since that time the number of those residing in England addicted to heroin and the amount of crime brought about by heroin use has decreased. Heroin-related deaths and the sadness of those who love those addicted to heroin has most likely decreased also.

Posted by from the DTES on 21 Jun 09 03:08 PM EDT
In May of this year Germany legalized perscription Herion. What this article lacks is context. For the population being studied I can already tell you the failure is in the lack of support post pilot project. For people of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver we can look at how to tackle their issues through many lenses: -poverty -abusive upbringings -lack of healthy early stage development in childhood - substance use - ethnicity If we can help maintain an addicts health by giving them percription Herion and it helps them seek further education, couselling, or the highest success of all, a job! I'd say the study would have accomplished its desired outcome.

Posted by pwkaplan on 25 Aug 09 10:32 AM EDT
I suspect that the reason that any innovative, progressive effort to solve a problem in the addiction field, is that we still lack enough good science to combat the prejudice that has attended addicts since before the criminalization of heroin. I guess no matter how many good studies are done, the people with points of view ranging from bizarre to cruel (see Orange County Detox above) and personal agendas will always be with us--but we can hope. I wish the BC group and their patients clear and unequivocal results.

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