Heroin substitute test may be tried
By JULIE ROBOTHAM
Thursday 24 January 2002
A pilot medical trial of an injected substitute for heroin could start in Sydney this year, with a handful of addicts receiving treatment up to three times a day.
The proposal - to offer supervised injections of the potent painkiller hydromorphone as a first step to weaning users off drugs - will reignite the long-running debate over whether prescribing heroin could entice into treatment people who have rejected other established therapies such as oral methadone.
Prime Minister John Howard has been implacably opposed to prescribing heroin itself. Four years ago he vetoed a planned heroin trial in the ACT.
But the government would have no power to prevent a trial of hydromorphone - a registered opiate in widespread use in Australian hospitals - if it were approved by a research ethics committee.
Hydromorphone, also known by its brand name Dilaudid, offered an almost immediate, short-lived "high" so similar to heroin that some users could not tell them apart, said Wayne Hall, the director of public policy and ethics at Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience.
Full article at:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/2002/01/24/FFX1MPTZRWC.html
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