HOPES HIGH TO EASE HEROIN TREATMENT

Congress wants to make it easier for more heroin addicts to kick their
habit, and President Clinton has signed legislation to make that possible.

The provision was pushed by Rep. Thomas J. Bliley Jr., R-7th District,
the House Commerce Committee chairman. A promising drug to treat
addicts is manufactured by a British-based firm with a U.S.
pharmaceutical arm that has it headquarters in the Richmond area. The
drug is awaiting Food and Drug Administration approval.

Clinton signed late Tuesday the "Children's Health Act of 2000." The
broad bill deals with a wide scope of childhood and prenatal health
problems. It includes the section pressed by Bliley and others to
enable treatment for more heroin addicts at a time of rising heroin
use.

That measure would permit physicians to prescribe certain addiction
treatment drugs from their offices, a major shift from the traditional
dispensing of methadone at clinics regulated by the Drug Enforcement
Administration.

It would allow bypassing of some regulatory hurdles for specially
qualified doctors, and its sponsors hope it also will encourage
quicker development of new drugs for treating addiction.

Clinton explained in a statement yesterday that the bill "makes
medical treatments for heroin addiction more available and accessible
by allowing qualified physicians to prescribe certain medications in
their offices and avoids the centralized clinic approach that many
addicts find inaccessible and stigmatizing."

In a statement earlier about his legislation, Bliley said simply,
"This will better help us fight the war on drugs."

Dr. Robert L. Balster, director of the Virginia Commonwealth
University Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies, also worked to see
the legislation passed. He praised Bliley and the staff of the
Commerce Committee.

"The problem addressed by this legislation is that the existing
regulations for methadone clinics were simply inappropriate for newer
science-based treatments being developed by drug abuse scientists and
the pharmaceutical industry to address heroin abuse," Balster said.

"Tom Bliley saw how to fix this and did it. This legislation
creatively allows a wider range of new treatment possibilities," he
added.

Balster and other experts said the law paves the way for a new
medication called buprenorphine that has proven effective for
treatment of heroin addiction.

When Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., was advocating the legislation in the
Senate, he called buprenorphine "an extraordinarily effective means
for combating heroin addiction by blocking the craving for heroin."

Buprenorphine is manufactured in Great Britain by a subsidiary of
Reckitt Benckiser, a British-based household products company whose
products include Lysol and Woolite. Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals
Inc., a U.S. arm of the company, has its headquarters in Chesterfield
County and has worked to develop buprenorphine in this country.

Charles O'Keeffe, president of the pharmaceuticals firm, said the drug
has been developed under a cooperative agreement with the federal
National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"It certainly will not be a blockbuster drug [in terms of profits]. We
developed it because it was the right thing to do," O'Keeffe said. His
company has an agreement with another company, with marketing
expertise, to market the drug in the United States, he added.

Experts at the National Institute on Drug Abuse report an increase in
the amount of heroin of high purity in recent years, making it
possible to snort or smoke heroin instead of injecting it. As a
result, more young people have begun experimenting with and becoming
addicted to heroin.

First-time use of heroin by children between ages 12 and 17 has
increased fourfold from the 1980s to 1995, these experts say, and
buprenorphine products likely will be the first medication used to
treat heroin-dependent adolescents.

In addition, the current system of treating addicts primarily in urban
settings doesn't adequately attack the suburban spread of narcotic
addiction, and experts say this could be addressed by prescription of
new anti-addiction medicines in a doctor's office.

Dr. Alan Leshner, the National Institute of Drug Abuse director, said
there's a major need for greater treatment of heroin addiction.

He testified before Congress, "When one takes into account that there
are approximately 810,000 persons in need of treatment for heroin
addiction and only space in the existing methadone clinic system for
180,000 patients, the need for expanding treatment for this population
takes on new light."