Pubdate: Tue, 07 Jun 2005
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2005 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274
Author: Sue Montgomery
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?131 (Heroin Maintenance)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/NAOMI (North American Opiate 
Medication Initiative)

HARD-CORE HEROIN ADDICTS TO TAKE PART IN YEAR-LONG STUDY

The sparkling clean room is painted a cheerful mango and is furnished with 
several bright blue chairs, each facing a cubicle backed by a mirror. All 
that's missing are the heroin addicts.

Soon, 80 hard-core users for whom the traditional methadone treatment 
hasn't worked, will head to the former hospital at the corner of Prince 
Arthur and St. Urbain Sts., sit in a cubicle and shoot up for free, up to 
three times a day, seven days a week.

Another 80 users will go to a pharmacy to take methadone orally and report 
to the clinic once a month. They'll be assigned randomly, and at the end of 
the year-long study, researchers will compare which group fared best.

The idea is to help addicts stabilize their addiction so they can get other 
aspects of their lives back on track, said Suzanne Brissette, one of the 
directors of the project.

"They have a lot of medical and psycho-social problems and are involved in 
property theft as well, so the whole community benefits if they are 
stabilized," Brissette told a news conference yesterday. "We also hope to 
reduce the number of injections happening in the community."

Similar studies have been done in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany, 
They have resulted in a drop in drug use and crime, and improved physical 
and mental health, and employment prospects. There was no negative impact 
on the community, according to Brissette.

Researchers will recruit chronic users who have been injecting for a long 
time and who have tried methadone treatment at least twice.

"They'll then be weaned at the end of 15 months of treatment," Brissette 
said. "But according to studies from Switzerland, Germany and the 
Netherlands, people ask to be weaned even earlier."

Researchers in Vancouver have already begun recruiting, although their 
phones haven't exactly been ringing off the hook. A combination of 
stringent entry requirements and misinformation about the program has meant 
only 21 people being signed up in three months. The goal is to get 158 
users in the gritty Downtown Eastside by November.

The $8.1-million study, called the North American Opiate Medication 
Initiative, is also being set up in Toronto and is funded by the Canadian 
Institutes of Health Research. The total number of participants is 470.

Participants will be screened when they enter the building - the former 
Jean d'Arc Hospital - to make sure they're enrolled in the program and that 
they aren't intoxicated.

They then have seven minutes to inject a prescribed amount of 
pharmaceutical-grade heroin and deposit the syringe in a sealed bucket. 
They will then be monitored for 23 minutes by nurses and doctors before 
being allowed to leave.

It's difficult to know exactly how many heroin users there are in Canada, 
but it's estimated there are between 40,000 and 90,000 regular injectors, 
5,000 of whom live in Montreal.

The estimated annual cost of illicit heroin use in Canada, in terms of the 
toll on the judicial and health systems, is $959 million, Brissette said. 
The cost to society of an untreated user is $47,000 per year, compared with 
$6,000 a year to treat a person with methadone, she said.

Pierre Lauzon, an addiction specialist who was involved in setting up the 
methadone treatment program in the 1980s, said the public is often wary 
about such projects. Such skepticism existed in Switzerland when the 
injection program study began in 1994.

"But then they held a referendum on it and the people supported it," he 
said. "The police were skeptical, too, but after several years, they came 
around."

"This is a project which will affect the community in a positive way and 
needs their co-operation," Brissette said, adding drug addicts are already 
using the building for programs run by the Fondation Dollard Cormier.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom