ROTTERDAM OPENS OLD FOLKS' HOME FOR AGEING JUNKIES

Time is catching up with veteran Dutch drug addicts

Utrecht - Holland's drug scene is showing its age.

What with ever-better medical care, successful methadone programmes and a
very low death rate among Dutch addicts - last year there were only 42
deaths among about 25,000 addicts - the average age of the country's
addicts has climbed to 36, and the health ministry says it will grow by
another 11 months this year.

"Our grandpa junkies are on the increase," the weekly paper Elsevier
reported recently. "We have the world's oldest junkies," said government
representative Benno Bruggink, explaining that the Dutch approach to drug
addiction stresses good medical treatment rather than repression and
criminalisation of the addicts.

In Holland's big cities the first heroin addicts have reached the
retirement age of 65 despite their years of addiction. In Rotterdam alone,
according to Harry Kuiper of the city's Boumanhuis drug clinic, several
dozen addicts have already turned 50.

Despite his gratification at the longer lifespans enjoyed by hard-drug
users, Kuiper said the aging addicts have an increasingly difficult time
holding their own in the drug scene. Many of them show symptoms between 50
and 65 that would normally appear 20 years later.

"Their years of addiction have taken their toll on their health," Kuiper
said. "They feel out-of-place and threatened in the drug scene, neglect
their personal hygiene, become absent-minded and have trouble running their
own lives."

Self-help organisations began warning about the problems of aging junkies
some time ago. Boumanhuis, working with Rotterdam's Junkies' Alliance and
the city's public health authority, has developed a plan for a senior
citizens residential home for older addicts which is scheduled to open for
its first residents early next year.

Like homosexuals or foreigners, said Kuiper explaining the plan, junkies
would face problems being accepted by other residents in normal old folks'
homes. "And besides, they need a very specialised sort of care," he said.

Initially the project will be limited to seven participants, who will not
have to go straight. Their addiction will be tolerated, said Kuiper, but
not allowed to progress.

He emphatically denied press reports that the Boumanhuis has been
considering hiring a "house dealer" to fill the daily drug needs of the
residents.

"We have no intention of supplying any drugs to anyone," Kuiper said.
"Residents who want their daily fix will have to go get their stuff
themselves or through their own contacts."

The residence will emphasise meeting the physical and psycho-social needs
of its residents, said Kuiper, "but we'll be happy to help anyone who wants
to reduce his drug consumption, too."

The knowledge and skills gained in experiences at the new residence will be
shared with normal senior citizens' homes later, so they can put it to use
themselves - in their own (newly established!) junkie department.

Holland's left-liberal health minister Els Borst-Ellers reacted coolly to
the planned new home. She thinks as little of special homes for aging
junkies, she said, as she does of special homes for foreigners or for
homosexuals.

But her ministry's spokesperson stressed that caring for and dealing with
drug addicts is a matter for each community, not the country as a whole.

22.10.1998

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski