FEWER NEW USERS FOR 'LOSER DRUG' HEROIN

Free Drugs, Needles Alter Thinking Of Youth

ZURICH -- A state's heroin policy, which includes providing
alternative narcotics and needle-exchange programs, has led to fewer
users as young people start to consider the substance a "loser drug,"
says a study outlined in the British medical journal Lancet.

The number of new heroin users in the Swiss state of Zurich rose more
than 10 times from 1975 to 1990 before falling 82 per cent by 2002,
researchers at the Psychiatric University Hospital in Zurich said in
the study. The government introduced its new, more liberal, policy in 1991.

"The medicalization of opiate dependence changed the image of heroin
use as a rebellious act to an illness that needs therapy," Carlos
Nordt and Rudolf Stohler wrote in the study. "Heroin seems to have
become a 'loser drug,' with its attractiveness fading for young people."

The city of Zurich was known for open drug scenes that flourished in
the late 1980s and early 1990s in the so-called "Needle Park" and the
abandoned Letten train station.

Since 1991, the state's government has given addicts supervised
access to methadone or buprenorphine, drugs that mimic some of
heroin's effects.

Mandatory health insurance covers treatment costs and patients can
choose any doctor they want.

The city has also tried to make heroin use safer by providing places
to inject the drug and exchanging used needles for new ones.

Policy-makers have criticized the government's approach, which
sometimes includes providing heroin itself, saying it would lead to
more users and longer dependence times.

New users in the state increased from 80 in 1975 to 850 in 1990
before falling to 150 in 2002, the authors said.

The results of the study don't necessarily mean that there's a
cause-and-effect relationship between the government's policy and the
decline in new heroin users, researchers led by Matthew Hickman at
Britain's University of Bristol said in an accompanying comment.

"Although there might be no evidence that a substantial increase in
heroin injection followed the introduction of a policy of heroin
prescribing, comparisons with other countries are necessarily
speculative," Hickman said.