END OF NAOMI WASTES RESEARCH

The federal government is about to pour millions of dollars in drug
research down the drain. This is not about the anticipated closure of
the supervised injection site this summer. This is about the NAOMI
project, the North American Opiate Medication Initiative, which is
about to end.

NAOMI was intended to be a project carried out in Montreal, Vancouver
and a couple of U.S. cities. But the scientists in the States were no
match for the drug warriors occupying the White House and that part
never got off the ground. Up here in Canada, with the Liberals in
power in Ottawa, the NAOMI research request scored high with the
Canadian Institute of Health Research. The government funded agency
forked over an unprecedented $8.1 million.

The experiment randomly assigned long-term drug addict participants
to treatments of oral methadone or injected heroin. A small
percentage received a pharmaceutical opiate called Dilaudid. Through
the 15 month course of their daily treatment with these drugs,
addicts received counselling and other support services including
help finding housing. Following the approval of the funds, Ottawa
agreed to allow for the importation of pharmaceutical grade heroin
and the use of this heroin for injection during the experiment.

Enrolment for the program began in February of 2005. In total there
would be 251 people--192 in Vancouver and the rest in Montreal.
Addicts and advocates complained that the criteria for participants
were strict to the point of almost being impossible to meet. Those in
Vancouver had to have tried and failed twice to beat their heroin
addiction through methadone. They had to be over 25, an addict for
more than five years, not be on probation or up on criminal charges
and live in the Downtown Eastside.

The ultimate goal for those supporting NAOMI was to come up with
research that would support making heroin available as part of the
health care program. It was a step up from the supervised injection
site where addicts could fix in a sanitary and secure facility but
still had to rely on street drugs of questionable quality and
committing crimes to raise the money to buy those drugs. "This one is
going to stop the crime," said Dean Wilson, one of Vancouver's best
known junkies and a star in the documentary Fix.

And indeed the whole world was watching. Australian addiction
specialist Dr. Alex Wodak said at the time NAOMI "is going to go down
in history as a very important piece of scientific research."

But NAOMI was only unique is some details. Similar experiments were
going in several European countries. One notable difference in the
cohort of participants here and in Europe is housing. In Germany
between 80 and 90 per cent of participants had stable housing.
Here--reflecting Ottawa's social housing policy--that figure is about
50 per cent, which reduces chances of success.

But from the beginning the question was always asked: what do you do
after 15 months of treatment with people who have been on heroin and
have gotten their lives somewhat in order?

In Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, the scientific
experiments were declared a success and have now been rolled into
public health programs funded by those governments. The Swiss,
incidentally, discovered that addicts fared far better on
pharmaceutical heroin than they did on methadone.

Here, the last few people are moving through the NAOMI experiment.
Those who are through are being offered methadone. But many are back
to their old street habits of crime to buy illegal drugs. The Harper
government is expected to turn its back on the NAOMI research results
rather than follow Europe's lead. If we were talking about cancer
patients or drugs to control rheumatoid arthritis, instead of the
illness of addiction, people would be marching in the streets.