DRUG STUDY WOULD PRESCRIBE HEROIN

Two of the city's leading medical researchers want Vancouver to take part in
clinical trials that would prescribe heroin to drug addicts.

Dr. Michael O'Shaughnessy and Dr. Martin Schechter say a rigorously
controlled scientific study, aimed at seeing whether prescription heroin
would help addicts who fail methadone treatment, should be held in Vancouver
and five other cities around North America.

At a conference on addiction and harm-reduction Friday, Schechter said a
sizable proportion of drug addicts refuse to try methadone. Of those who do
take it, many shoot street heroin at the same time and many quit.

"Methadone does not attract all heroin addicts," said Schechter, a
world-renowned epidemiologist and director of the Centre for Health
Evaluation and Outcome Sciences.

"It is successful for many people, but it is not successful for some
sub-populations of injection-drug users.

"Opiate dependence remains a major public-health and social problem. We need
to look at alternatives."

He and O'Shaughnessy, who is director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in
HIV/AIDS, belong to a group of researchers planning the North American
Opiate Medication Initiative.

They want to enroll about 420 "intractable" chronic heroin addicts in the
six-city trial, randomizing half to a group receiving methadone. The other
half would go to a treatment centre and be injected with diacetylmorphine --
pure, sterile, pharmaceutical-grade heroin -- three times a day.

The proposed trial would run for a year in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and
three U.S. cities. New York City, Baltimore, Chicago, New Haven and
Sacramento are being considered.

Schechter said that in Vancouver, 80 addicts would likely take part.

O'Shaughnessy said that since the pharmaceutical-grade heroin would come
from Health Canada, the initiative cannot go ahead unless Health Minister
Allan Rock wants it to.

"Let's make no bones about it, the federal minister of health is the person
who calls the shots on dangerous drugs," said O'Shaughnessy, a recipient of
the Order of British Columbia.

Schechter, who has also received the honour, said many other individuals and
groups would also need to be on board -- among them, the B.C. government,
the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C., law enforcement officials
and community residents.

The researchers also need and estimated $6 million in funding for the trial.

Schechter said he and his colleagues don't have a preconceived idea that
prescribing heroin is beneficial to addicts.

"If this study turns out to say that heroin is inferior [to methadone], I
will be the first person to stand up and say that it is."

The researchers hope the trial will start within two years.