Pubdate: Mon, 25 May 1998
Source: Vancouver Sun (Canada)
Contact:  http://www.vancouversun.com/
Author: Rick Ouston Vancouver Sun

HEROIN ADDICT ASKS COURT FOR METHADONE

A long-time heroin addict who has spent most of his adult life in prison is
asking the Federal Court of Canada to allow him to take methadone in jail
to curb his addiction.

Dwight Lowe, 42, has spent 24 years in prison, mostly for hold-ups to raise
money to buy drugs.

He gets released, commits a robbery, gets caught, and returns to prison.
Now, facing release again in about a year, Lowe says it's finally time to
get the monkey off his back and start taking the heroin substitute
methadone.

"I believe allowing me access to the Methadone Maintenance Program would be
in the best interests of myself, society and inside the prison system,"
Lowe's application to the court says.

Lowe wants to take advantage of a methadone program introduced by
Corrections Canada this year in a move designed to stem the number of
HIV-infections in prisons. But entry to the program is restricted to people
already on methadone before their imprisonment, said Judy Portman, national
HIV/AIDS coordinator at Corrections Canada in Ottawa. There are currently
25 prisoners across the country receiving methadone, she said.

The program might be extended to other addicts after it is evaluated for a
year or 18 months, but "at this time all I can say is our policy is for
those who have been on community programs," she said.

Lowe says methadone represents the only chance he has of ever making a life
for himself. His lawyer, Donna Turko, is challenging the federal policy
under sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that
guarantee the "right to life, liberty and security of person," and "equal
protection and benefit of law."

Their case includes a submission from Vancouver doctor Stanley Carl de
Vlaming, the head of addictions medicine at St. Paul's Hospital who runs
the Gastown Medical Clinic, which includes "a busy methadone practice," the
doctor writes.

"In my opinion methadone maintenance has the highest retention rates
compared with other drug treatment methods and is the key factor in
reducing the risks of criminal activity, HIV infection and medical
complaints connected with the illicit use of heroin," Dr. de Vlaming says.

And, contrary to popular belief, methadone does not keep a person "high" 24
hours a day. Unlike the "rush" of a heroin injection, methadone taken
orally does not result in euphoria, and after a few days of finding the
proper dose for a patient there is no sedative affect, which allows
patients "to participate normally in job and familial activities," the
doctor wrote.

Even if the drug offered a respite from reality, Lowe says he already gets
high on heroin three to four times a week while inside prison, and says he
has the urinalysis tests to prove it, tests that have proven "hot" for
morphine and resulted in his losing parole releases.

"It's no secret the visitors pack drugs in," he says. "There's no secret it
comes through the mail. It's no secret it comes over the fences." About
half of people serving time in Canadian jails are there for offences
involving drugs, either possession or trafficking or committing crimes to
buy drugs.

During the past few years, coroners' inquests and conferences on AIDS in
B.C. have been told that about 11 per cent of prisoners report using
illegal drugs behind bars, and about one per cent of the prison population
carry the HIV virus -- 10 times the number in the civilian population.

An estimated 20 to 40 per cent of prisoners also suffer from hepatitis C.
Both viruses can be transferred through dirty needles, and AIDS activists
warn that prisoners are eventually released into the population, carrying
their potentially deadly viruses with them. An AIDS conference in Vancouver
last autumn heard a prison doctor talk about penitentiaries where one or
two hidden needles will be shared by dozens of addicts.

"The bottom line is I've never been able to stay away from the heroin,"
Lowe said in a telephone interview from Kent prison near Agassiz. He
started shooting up at the age of 15. The price was then $4 a cap, enough
for three hits. But the prices rose and his addiction grew and he went to
the B.C. Penitentiary at the age of 18 for drug possession and robbery and
weapons offences.

"I'm not a dummy," Lowe says. "I've got about 60 credits of university.
I've got trade certificates. I'm not a fool. I've done things and worked
like everybody else." It is the seductive lure of the drug that drives him
to crime, he says.

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