The Danish parliament Monday has given its approval for a heroin maintenance pilot project, Agence France-Presse [13] reported, citing the Danish Health Ministry. The project will be aimed at the Scandinavian nation's most recalcitrant heroin users.
If it goes according to plan, the pilot project will begin this year and last through 2009. It will cost about $14 million dollars and some 500 of Denmark's most marginalized and most affected heroin users will participate. Heroin will be prescribed in combination with methadone. The aim is to rehabilitate problem drug users and reduce their criminal activity, the health ministry said.
Denmark will join a select group of European countries, including Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, where such programs have consistently resulted in a decline in property crime, as well as improvements in clients' health and welfare. Also allowing experimentation with heroin maintenance are Great Britain, which restarted it last year well over a decade after the conservative government of Margaret Thatcher had shut it down, and Canada, where Vancouver hosts the North American Opiate Maintenance Initiative (NAOMI), the only such program in North America. Earlier this month, the city of Tel Aviv [14] announced it was seeking permission from the Ministry of Health to initiate a pilot program as well.