Trial to give free heroin to hard-core addicts in Vancouver and Montreal

JUSTINE HUNTER

VICTORIA - From Monday's Globe and Mail, Monday, Jun. 01, 2009

Two hundred drug addicts in Montreal and Vancouver will be lining up for
free heroin
later this year at publicly funded clinics. And they can thank the
federal Conservative
government, despite its hard line against hard drugs.

The trial - which will offer the drug in pill and injectable forms as
well - builds on a
similar heroin experiment last year that found most participants
committed far fewer
crimes and their physical and mental health improved.

The three-year medical trial will put Canada on the leading edge of
international
addictions research "for a population that is in desperate need for
alternate health
options," said Michael Krausz, the lead investigator.

But the project is only proceeding with the blessing of, and $1-million
in funding from,
the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, an agency of Health Canada.

The federal Conservative government is currently fighting Vancouver's
supervised-injection facility, Insite, in court. Prime Minister Stephen
Harper has
argued that taxpayer money should not fund drug use, but should be spent
on prevention
and treatment.

The heroin trial goes even further than Insite, not only providing a
safe place to
inject, but also the heroin itself.

The drug is legally purchased in Europe and brought to Canada under
armed guard.

The trial is called SALOME, the Study to Assess Longer-term Opioid
Medication
Effectiveness, and it will build on a similar heroin experiment that
wrapped up last
summer. The North American Opiate Medication Initiative (NAOMI) was also
funded by the
Canadian Institutes of Health Research with the approval of Health Canada.

The NAOMI trial was criticized by some addictions physicians but drew no
comment from
the federal government, which paid more than $8-million for the research.

"It's been disappointing," said Martin Schechter, who led NAOMI and is
also working on
SALOME. Dr. Schechter said European health authorities are very
interested in the work,
but Canadian authorities will not acknowledge it.

"There's a lot invested in NAOMI. We did everything we could to
translate the
information for decision-makers to make them understand what it meant,"
he said.

Dr. Krausz, a leading addictions researcher, has conducted another
heroin trial in
Germany, the largest such randomized clinical trial in Europe.

The Canadian research aims to determine if medically prescribed heroin
is a safe and
effective treatment and if users will accept the drug in pill form
instead of injecting
it.. It will also measure whether a licenced narcotic, Hydromorphone,
can be used
instead of heroin.

His team is now recruiting about 200 severe heroin addicts who have
failed to respond to
existing treatments and they expect to have the clinics in Vancouver and
Montreal open
by this fall.

Last week, Dr. Krausz's medical team sat down with Vancouver
philanthropists asking for
additional support for the clinics that will distribute both heroin and
a legal narcotic
substitute to hard-core addicts. Organizers say one business leader
immediately offered
a cheque for $100,000.

Trish Walsh, executive director of the InnerChange Foundation, who
arranged last week's
fundraiser with top Vancouver business and community leaders, said the
30 people who
gathered in a corporate boardroom understood that the city cannot ignore
its
drug-addicted population.

"We have been sleepwalking right through the middle of this crisis."

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq did not return calls, but her press
secretary, Josée
Bellemare, offered an e-mailed statement on the minister's behalf: "Our
government
recognizes that injection drug users need assistance. That's why we are
investing in
prevention and treatment, to help people recover from their drug
addictions."