Vancouver: Free heroin clinic closer to reality

Free heroin clinic closer to reality
Experimental addiction site could be open this fall

Neal Hall
Vancouver Sun


March 25, 2004

Solicitor-General Rich Coleman says he is open to the idea of the clinical experiment.
CREDIT: Steve Bosch, Vancouver Sun


VANCOUVER - An experiment that will provide free heroin and methadone to 158 Vancouver addicts moved one step closer to reality this week after Vancouver city hall issued a permit to develop a site at the corner of Hastings and Abbott.

Dr. Martin Schechter, the principal investigator of the Vancouver part of a Canada-wide trial to prescribe heroin to see if it helps stabilize them and improve their health, said Wednesday the next step is to seek a building permit and start renovations.

The site at 400 Abbott also needs approval from Health Canada for an exemption from the Narcotics Act, similar to the approval received by Vancouver's supervised-injection site.

If all the approvals fall into place, the new facility will probably be open in the fall, Schechter said.

The 158 addicts have not been selected to take part in the clinical trial in Vancouver, he added.

B.C. Solicitor-General Rich Coleman said Wednesday he is open to the idea of the clinical experiment.

I think any initiative that can help people is worth the initiative," he said.

"I think the challenge with addictions is you have two balances. One is the addiction, which you need to treat and need to have some solution for those folks -- methadone has been one of those solutions, obviously, for a long time for addicts," Coleman said.

"The other side of it, of course, is that if you can actually help those people, maybe they can get on with a better part of their lives, so I don't think you always treat just the people that are addicted."

The trial attracted headlines last October when a letter went out to residents near the 600 block of East Hastings, advising them a development permit had been requested to open a site in order to run a two-year experiment in prescribing heroin.

The North American Opiate Injection Trial was supposed to begin in March, along with similar trials in Toronto and Montreal.

Schechter said earlier that the original experiment, first discussed in 1997, was supposed to include American test sites as well, which is why it was called the North American trial. But the environment in the U.S. was not particularly amenable to the study, he said.

The experiment, which has been granted $8.1 million from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, will involve 470 people in the three Canadian cities.

In Vancouver, 88 people will get heroin and 70 will get methadone. Both groups will get extensive counselling and support in trying to quit altogether.

The study participants must be at least 25 years old, have been addicted to opiates for a minimum of five years and have injected them for at least one year, and have failed methadone maintenance treatment at least twice.

Those who stay with the program will receive about $100 to compensate them for filling out lengthy evaluations at certain points in the trial.

The experiment is modelled after studies in Europe that showed users given heroin had a better success rate of stabilizing their lives and improving their health.

Swiss and Dutch experiments have shown that those given heroin were arrested less, had a higher chance of holding down a job and went through fewer bouts of homelessness.

The Canada-wide clinical trial has already received approvals from ethics review boards at three participating universities, along with the body that regulates the prescription of medications in experiments.