BY KEVIN SAWYER – In a move that could be a game changer for heroin addicts, the government of Canada moved to legalize heroin. The move allows physicians to provide their heroin addicted patients with a pharmaceutical grade heroin known as diacetylmorphine. The liberal prime minister, Justin Trudeau, believed that the current health care laws on the books were far too harsh and draconian and he moved the Canadian Parliament to change some of them.The changes have been made to Health Canada’s, their national health insurance program, special access program. The changes now allow doctors to treat their heroin addicted patients with the drug in an effort to try and free them from the addiction.
Following the changes to the law, Health Canada released a formal statement saying that, “Canada is currently facing an opioid overdose crisis and we need to assist our healthcare providers in treating their patients including those who are suffering from chronic relapsing opioid dependency. Scientific evidence supports the medical use of diacetylmorphine for the treatment of chronic relapsing opioid dependence in certain individual cases. Health Canada recognizes the importance of providing physicians with the power to make evidence based treatment proposals in these extreme cases.”
For the past decade, the Crosstown Clinic of Vancouver has been doing just that. They have been administering a program by where 50 of the most hardened heroin addicts are being treated by way of three injections every day. The treatment is hard core. If you miss and appointment, you’re out of the program. No excuses. The clinic has been running this program for those who are no longer able to respond to a standard methadone treatment for the addiction.
The success of the program has had people wondering if it might be able to get the current opioid epidemic in the United States under control somehow. Dr. Scott MacDonald, the chief physician at Crosstown, testified before the US Congress this past summer indicating that this treatment not only helps these addicts but prevents them from falling into drug related crime in an effort to feed their addiction.
Countries such as Switzerland and Denmark already have such a treatment program in place.
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