I think heroin maintenance is a fantastic idea but I don't know of many addicts that can get by on 2 doses a day, and having to travel far to get them. It's not like methadone. Addicts need to use at least 3 times a day to stave off sickness, and very commonly 4-6 times. I fear this program isn't enough to greatly reduce the criminality associated with an illegal habit, so will be labeled a failure and cited as why heroin maintenance is a bad idea by prohibition zealots.

Getting a prescription to pick up at any pharmacy would do far more to reduce the problems associated with heroin; half steps are sometimes counter-productive in reducing harm.

These so called treatment centers, all privately owned of course is a joke. Thirty thousand dollars for three months to get treatment is crazy. I told one salesmen, yes they are hard core salesmen, that it would be cheaper to fly to the Netherlands and get treatment. He said well your loved one wouldn't come back if he went over there. I said "hopefully not" because if the drug policies stayed the same in the U.S. I would soon join him.This is a real tragity for anyone that wants to get clean because it is impossable here unless you are rich , what an oxymoron , if you were rich you wouldn't have a problem getting any type of drugs in the first place.The idiots advertise they are real experts at treating drug and alcohol...what? Isn't alcohol a drug? Think about the statement drugs AND alcohol, isn't that like saying fruit and oranges? Just call any of these pushers of the drug treatment centers and ask them if they think drugs should be legal. I've never had one to say yes and if you don't understand why drugs should be legal you wont understand anything! paganpat@comcast.net

Speaking from personal expierience, a longtime addict can easily get by on two doses a day.One dose a day I would question, but two a day at a healthy enough volume per dose is more than enough to stave off dope sick.

..2 doses ( one in the morning to get you to work/school and the other to not experience withdrawals at night) would be much appreciated here in Australia.. not sure if you are comparing the strength of pharmaceutical grade diamorphine with the crap ya have been getting off the streets... but i think a lil perspective /view to be maintained medically in order to function socially.. would be wise... these "enough is never enough statements" (pardon me if i'm wrong) are exactly the scaremongering tactics employed by anti-drug/religious mainstreamers in order to keep addicts from accessing basic human rights /civil liberties... so if you are an OP8 addict please be mindful at how easily the uneducated are to manipulate... and assume responsibility .. I think the Danish Govt ( and its intelligent citizens) should be applauded in adopting a policy based on minimizing harm to the drug user and to society in general by making this issue a medical one...we unfortuneately in Australia are privatizing prisons and having religious fanatics dictate laws to politicians who compliantly bend and spread just for the sake of re-election... a tragic waste of human life

The US is SO far behind the rest of the world when it comes to things like this!! For God's sake, we flip out over a woman's nude breasts being shown on tv!!!! We'll NEVER be as open-minded and sophisticated as Europe; there's WAY too many right-wing bible-thumping conservatives who will not allow it. People in the US need to GROW THE FUCK UP!!!!!! ARE WE THAT IMMATURE THAT WE STILL CAN'T HANDLE A LITTLE NUDITY?!?! APPARENTLY SO!! IT'S SO VERY UNFORTUNATE!! I'VE NEVER BEEN MORE ASHAMED TO CALL MYSELF AN AMERICAN!!!

There is an interesting article on the history of heroin maintenance programs [See Here: Free Junk for Junkies] Basically, maintenance programs were the norm before all this drug war nonsense started. Before the criminalization of drugs, mid 1800's to early 1900's, doctor's routinely prescribed heroin and morphine to addicted patients...of course these maintenance programs worked perfectly well and most addicts were seen as perfectly respectable members of society, just like any other person most of them worked, made money and were fully functioning. Aside from the benefits to the individual addict, these maintenance programs of course didn't have any of the negative social repercussions that the criminalization of drugs did...it's quite predictable what happened after the prohibition of drugs went into effect and the maintenance programs ended.

An excerpt from the article:

In the 19th century, all drugs were legal and readily available. Drug addiction was not uncommon, though it was rarely the result of the recreational use of drugs. Rather it was usually caused by the excessive use of opium and morphine (and later heroin) in medical care. Self-prescribing doctors often became hooked. So did soldiers: After the Civil War, Americans called addiction "the army disease."

Just as the origins of addiction were different, so were the consequences. Because drugs were legal, they were cheap. An addict didn't have to bankrupt himself or enter a criminal subculture to maintain a habit and so addiction rarely led to a life in ghettoes and gutters. On the contrary, the Victorian stereotype of an addict was a bored, middle-class housewife.

Addiction itself was generally not considered shameful. What mattered was how the addict behaved. The addict who reveled in selfish, destructive, pleasure-seeking excess was contemptible. But the addict who worked hard and did all that was expected of a good bourgeois citizen was just as respectable as any other person.

These attitudes shaped how doctors treated addiction. Much research into breaking addiction was done and many doctors struggled to get their patients off drugs. But doctors also knew that a regular, low-level dose of morphine or heroin could keep away the sickness of withdrawal with little or no impairment of the patient's ability to lead a productive life. When quitting proved too demanding, doctors gave their patients maintenance doses.

From the beginning of the 20th century until the 1920s, social reformers in many countries scored a series of victories in their drive to criminally prohibit alcohol, opium, morphine, heroin, prostitution, pornography, gambling, lewd theatre performances and dancehalls.

The anti-vice crusade was very much a moral reform movement and along with changes in the law it sought changes in attitude...At first, doctors took little notice of the new moralism, assuming that no matter what the legal status of drugs their freedom to practice as they saw fit would be untouched; some physicians were even leaders in the prohibition movement.

But the reformers, and the criminal prohibition they enacted, succeeded in changing how drugs were seen. Drugs were no longer a health issue. They were a criminal matter. Law enforcement officials became key figures in drug policy and the police naturally drew a bright line between the legal and illegal. Drugs were simply contraband, criminal, evil. The context of a drug's use was irrelevant because the law doesn't make exceptions for evil. Illegal drugs must simply be wiped out.

In 1916, the United States Justice Department declared that maintenance was not a legitimate medical practice and therefore was illegal under the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. Doctors were furious and loudly protested, but to no avail.

By 1920, as historian David Musto wrote in The American Disease, "advocacy of maintenance was repressed as sternly as socialism." Doctors and pharmacists were arrested. Clinics doing the same work that the Swiss and Dutch would experiment with 70 years later, with the same results, were raided and shut down. A total ban on heroin in medicine followed.

Desperate addicts looked elsewhere for drugs and a criminal black market in narcotics blossomed. The criminal dealer "finds himself in clover," lamented the Illinois Medical Journal in 1926, while "the doctor who needs narcotics used in reason to cure and allay human misery finds himself in a pit of trouble." Within a decade of the criminalization of drugs, maintenance had vanished from the United States and was soon forgotten.

Sorry that was so long, but there's even more interesting history in the article...including discussion about current maintenance programs and the predictable success that they are having.