ADDICTS RECEIVE FREE HEROIN IN FEDERAL TREATMENT TEST

Columbia University Research Seeks Cure For People With Drug Habits

NEW YORK - Researchers at Columbia University are offering free heroin
to addicts and paying them to use it under a federally authorized
program aimed at finding a cure for their drug habits.

Two trials involving heroin injections are among six related
drug-addiction studies being conducted at Columbia's College of
Physicians and Surgeons, all of which focus on the role existing
medications can play in defeating drug addictions.

Since September, 14 addicts have received regular doses of pure heroin
after being given naltrexone (pronounced nal-TREX-own), buprenorphine
(boo-pruh-NOR-fin) or methadone, which are medications found to be
effective in neutralizing heroin's high.

The researchers want to learn whether stronger doses of these
medications are needed and can be prescribed without risk,
particularly in light of the increasingly pure heroin being sold on
the streets.

"A dose that was probably good enough 15 years ago may not be good
enough for heroin now," said Dr. Herbert Kleber, a professor of
psychiatry at Columbia, who directs the medical college's division on
substance abuse and is medical director of the National Center on
Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia.

Heroin and cocaine have been tested on mice and other laboratory
animals. But Columbia's study is the only one in the country testing
addicts with heroin.

"If you have a promising drug in animal trials," Kleber said, "you
need to do it in human trials to see if it adequately works, because
we're different from animals in physiology, metabolism and the ability
to report on subjective effects" of drugs like heroin.

Dr. Marian Fischman, a psychologist at Columbia who studies
medications for drug abusers, said the volunteers, who agree to stay
in the hospital for six or seven weeks, had rejected offers to treat
their heroin habit.

"We would not give a drug of abuse to someone who was seeking
treatment," she said. "We refer anyone to treatment who would even
moderately consider it."