HEROIN CLAIMS ANOTHER LIFE

A 26-YEAR-OLD man was found dead on Wednesday night after a suspected
heroin overdose. It is reported that the young man was a regular drug
user.

The young man, who was living with his parents and was found
unconscious by his father on the couch, was pronounced dead by police
who arrived at the house after being alerted by the father. State
coroner, Sophocles Sophocleous, dismissed any suspicions of foul play
but did say that a drug overdose could have been the cause of death
for the 26-year-old.

If it were revealed that the youngster did die of an overdose, it
would be the fourteenth case of its kind this year.

Dr George Poyiadjis who works for the Open Therapeutic Community for
Addicted Persons (TOLMI), told Politis newspaper that he spoke to the
unfortunate youngster the night he died, "That night he called me up
and told me that he decided to stop taking drugs and that the last
couple of days he was trying to detoxify himself in his own home."

A saddened Poyiadjis further mentioned how the youngster's situation
had improved recently and that after going clean for nine months was
even going to college and thinking about his future. Poyiadjis further
mentioned the need for the government to focus more on therapy for
drug addicts.

"It is time we all woke up and tackled this problem"

According to the European monitoring centre for drugs and drug
addicts, since 1995, the Ministry's of Health's Mental Health Services
have been collecting data from inpatient and outpatient therapeutic
centres in Cyprus.

The number of persons seeking treatment has been increasing constantly
from 1995 till 2003 with the most popular primary drugs of choice
among patients in 2002 being heroin, 54.5 per cent, cannabis, 27 per
cent, and cocaine, eight per cent.

The number of patients dependent on heroin has been on the increase
since 1998. In 2003, 65 per cent of all treatment seekers and 85 per
cent of heroin users reported injecting drug use as their most common
route of administration, 95 per cent of which were current injectors.