Canada - Free heroin? Unusual clinic offers 'chance at being human again'

[S.J.B.]

Free heroin? Unusual clinic offers 'chance at being human again'
Nick Purdon & Leonardo Palleja
CBC
June 9th, 2019

When I first met Kieran Collins in Vancouver three years ago, he had a $100-a-day street heroin habit that he fed any way he could.

...

Twice a day, Collins visits the Crosstown Clinic in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. A nurse hands him a syringe of prescription-grade heroin.

It's just enough of a dose so that he doesn't go into withdrawal.

"It's not like this makes the problem just go away," Collins says, but it allows him to function.

In total, 140 people are prescribed heroin at the clinic. For each of them, other treatments such as methadone haven't worked.

Read the full story here.

 

[S.J.B.]

What they fail to mention is that this clinic also has a number of users receiving hydromorphone instead of heroin and that a study at the clinic showed that it is equally effective at keeping folks off of street drugs, and is less likely to cause overdose or seizure. Due to this study and for regulatory and stigma-related reasons, the few clinics elsewhere in Canada that have decided to use this model are all using hydromorphone instead of heroin.

 

[cj]

I wish we had this in the US. I know a large number of iv H users who have failed suboxone. Suboxone is rapidly becoming the only maintenance option in many places in the us.

 

[Ganjcat]

Somehow I dont see the pharma giants doing this for 'free ' its good that they are in Canada though society is doomed to always have a retarded view on drugs

 

[Painful One]

“A chance of being human again”
That brought tears to my eyes.

God bless the doctors, nurses, and others who are involved with helping others to have a chance of being human again.

“I think people who talk about tough love for addicts — it's the easy way out," Wayne says. "It's way harder to stay engaged and practice unconditional love, and show love for somebody who is lost."

It is encouraging to see human beings helping other human beings. I hope these kind of programs become way more prevalent and assessable for those in need. My heart goes out to anyone suffering and this is extreme suffering.

What a better world this would be if we all practiced UNCONDITIONAL LOVE!

 

[Jabberwocky]

Somehow I dont see the pharma giants doing this for 'free '

bayer let the patent for heroin expire, so it won't be super expensive.

i really hope they do that in the UK, we used to have a heroin clinic near me but the yanks pressured us to close it so we capitulated. quite a lot of patients who'd previously been stable on prescription heroin died within a year of it closing.

 

[S.J.B.]

bayer let the patent for heroin expire, so it won't be super expensive.

It happens to be quite expensive in Canada because it unfortunately isn't an approved drug here and has to be imported from Switzerland.