Drug War Issues
The article was produced in collaboration with AlterNet and first appeared here.
It may seem counterintuitive, but the best way to deal with heroin addiction among some hardcore users may be to give them heroin. That's the takeaway from a seminal study just published by the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Prescription diamorphine could be preferable to street heroin. (New Jersey State Police)
What the meta-analysis found across all trials was a greater reduction in the use of illicit "street" heroin in patients receiving pharmaceutical heroin compared to the control groups (who generally only received methadone). "Heroin-prescribing, as a part of highly regulated regimen, is a feasible and effective treatment for a particularly difficult-to-treat group of heroin-dependent patients," the study concluded.
It's not just heroin users who benefit. In most of the trials, the researchers found reductions in criminal justice, imprisonment, and health care costs, while finding no negative effects on public safety.
Providing heroin to especially treatment-resistant users is known as heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) or heroin maintenance therapy. While heroin maintenance trials have been underway in several European countries, as well as Australia, and Canada, none have ever been done in the United States.
"The feasibility and effectiveness of heroin-assisted treatment has, once again, been borne out in the scientific literature," said Lindsay LaSalle, a harm reduction attorney with the Drug Policy Alliance. "The question that remains is not whether heroin maintenance is backed by science, but whether it will ever be backed by politicians and government officials in the United Sates. As of now, the only thing that stands in our way is ideology and stigma."
Nevada became the first state to try to break down the walls preventing heroin maintenance trials when state Sen. Tick Segerblom (D-Las Vegas) introduced a bill that would have created a four-year heroin maintenance pilot project. But that bill didn't pass.
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Comments
WOW first Marijuana, now
EVER?
The question is not whether heroin maintenance will ever be backed by gov't officials in the US. For a while it was. Same in some other countries. It's not like it'd be breaking new ground.
What's odd is how the "British system" mysteriously went away in Britain without there ever being a formal statement or even acknowledgement of policy change. It was the accepted thing for many years, and then it got to where it's like it never was.
In reply to EVER? by Robert Goodman (not verified)
I think the Thatcher
I think the Thatcher administration defunded it, influenced by the Reagan administration. But I've never verified the history. My understanding is that it has remained legal in Britain, but virtually impossible to do. That seems to be slowly changing back though.
You are right that for awhile it was almost as if it had never happened. Fortunately Switzerland picked up the torch, and others have followed.
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