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BC  

Free heroin to solve crisis

British Columbia's chief medical health officer is looking to expand a program that would give addicts free, clean, prescription heroin and other opioids to addicts that haven't responded to other treatments.

B.C. set a record in 2016, when 914 people died from illicit drug overdoses, up almost 80 per cent from 2015. In April, the province declared a public health emergency after illicit drugs killed more than 200 people in the first three months of the year. 

Dr. Perry Kendall says prescribing heroin and hydromorphone has been a proven method of treatment for some addicts.

“In the Crosstown Clinic, we did the same randomized controlled trials in the 2000s, this does work for people who fail the other treatments,” Kendall said.

The Vancouver clinic currently has about 150 patients who receive their drugs for free.

“The fear with all the trials of heroin was that people would just like getting high so much that they would use more and more and more,” Kendall said. “That didn't happen in any of the trials, people adjusted to a certain level, and then over time when their lives stabilized, many of them reduced that level ... and some of them actually transitioned into what you might call drug-free recovery.”

Kendall says once the need for the drugs is met, addicts can focus on getting their lives in order.

“It isn't really the drugs themselves that stop people from leading a normal life if they're addicted, it's trying to get hold of supplies on the illicit market, which involves a lot of hunting and stealing and prostitution and is fraught with a number of dangers.”

Interior Health recently announced they are looking to get approval from Health Canada to operate a mobile safe consumption site, that will allow addicts to use drugs under the supervision of medical personnel. 

Lannea Parfitt, director of public engagement with Interior Health, says the health authority is not pursuing offering prescription heroin for addicts at this time, and that this would be a provincial issue.

Dr. Kendall says simply throwing drug offenders in jail has never worked to solve addiction problems, and prescribing clean drugs can actually be cheaper than the alternative.

He pointed to research that has been done in Europe that showed the cost savings of prescribing addicts clean drugs.

“When you look at what it costs to keep folk in the clinic versus what it would cost if they were on the streets, robbing, or dealing, or going to jail, going through the court system, it was in the order of about 13,000 euro per person per year saved.”

Kendall does not know what such a program would cost in B.C., and doesn't have an estimated timeline for when it could happen.

But he says that along with a prescribed heroin program, the province will also need to expand its “first line treatments,” like Suboxone and Methodone.

“This was reserved for the people who failed the best that there was to offer,” he said. “You couldn't go straight from the streets without doing anything else to go and get your heroin.

“If you had enough good access to Suboxone or Methadone, with the necessary counselling and support that help that program work well, and you still failed that, then you might be available for the augmented (prescription heroin) therapy.”



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