FREE HEROIN PROGRAM RECRUITS ADDICTS

VANCOUVER - A program to hand out free heroin in a bid to keep junkies
from the mercy of the streets, desperately selling their bodies or
stealing for drugs will begin recruiting addicts Thursday.

Under a clinical trial just approved by Health Canada, 158 Vancouver
addicts will be given free prescriptions for pharmaceutical-grade
heroin for 12 to 15 months. Officials say they hope that freed from a
daily pursuit of money, users can stabilize their lives.

A second site is being readied for the North American Opiate
Medication Initiative in Montreal, expected to open in April, and the
project will begin in Toronto shortly after that, said Jim Boothroyd,
a spokesman for the initiative in Vancouver, known as NAOMI.

Volunteers today are papering the Downtown Eastside with posters
asking for recruits for the study. They say more than 4,000 drug
addicts live in the slum near NAOMI's clinic.

"They have to have been addicted to heroin for at least five years,"
said Boothroyd. "Once we have a random sample, there will be about a
month's hiatus before we actually start prescribing."

The free drugs will be available by mid-March.

Police hope the project will bring a drop in petty crime rampant in
Vancouver. The rate of car break-ins is among the highest in North
America. Similar programs in Switzerland were able to show a drop in
theft. They were quickly developed into pilot and then permanent
programs, said Anne Livingston, director of the Vancouver Area Network
of Drug Users.

The project has scientific approval -- and $6.4 million -- from the
Canadian Institutes of Health Research, a government agency.