REHAB CENTRE UPSET AFTER QUEBEC PULLS FUNDS FOR HEROIN STUDY

A Montreal drug-treatment centre is accusing the provincial
government of playing politics in killing funding for a three-year
study to treat heroin addiction.

The cancellation of the $600,000 grant follows the publication this
week of a study showing that giving heroin to hard-core addicts at
the centre's supervised clinic leads to higher rates of recovery.

"We're very surprised because all the discussions that we had with
the (Social Services) minister in the last few weeks were very
positive," said Eric Fabres, the centre's co-ordinator of quality
services. "We can't understand why the minister has changed her
position. ... But we find it very peculiar that at the moment that we
published the results in the New England Journal of Medicine, the
minister decided to withdraw her support from the project."

The study, titled the North American Opiate Medication Initiative
(NAOMI), sought to analyze whether heroin-assisted therapy offers
more benefit to addicts who want to kick their habit than standard
methadone treatment.

The researchers monitored 251 addicts in Montreal and Vancouver. In
Montreal, addicts were given heroin at the Centre de recherche et
d'aide pour narcomanes.

The study found that among addicts who received heroin by injection,
88 per cent completed the recovery program, compared with a
54-per-cent completion rate for those who took oral methadone.

But researchers also discovered that 10 per cent of addicts who took
Dilaudid, a legal prescription opiate known as hydromorphone, did as
well as those on heroin.

For the second phase of the research, titled SALOME (Study to Assess
Longer-term Opioid Medication Effectiveness), scientists wanted to
compare heroin and Dilaudid for a three-year period.

The rationale is that if Dilaudid is truly as good as heroin in
helping diehard addicts recover, it would solve the legal problem of
having to use heroin, Fabres said.

"But without the funding, the project is dead," he added.

Genevieve Trudel, political attache to Social Services Minister Lise
Theriault, said the decision to cancel the grant was simply cost-cutting.