CLINIC WOULD PRESCRIBE HEROIN

Weeks after North America's first legal supervised drug injection site
opened on East Hastings, plans are in the works for a clinic a few blocks
east for addicts to inject prescribed heroin as part of a scientific trial.

The goal of the study is to determine whether prescribed heroin is better
than methadone for people who have failed at standard therapies. Proponents
cite a Swiss study that showed arrests of chronic drug users dropped from
69 per cent to 10 per cent and the employment rate doubled, from 14 to 32
per cent, when heroin was prescribed.

The short-term trial would be conducted in three cities-Vancouver, Montreal
and Toronto-by researchers from UBC, the University of Montreal and
University of Toronto. Known as the North American Opiate Medication
Initiative (NAOMI), it's being funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health
Research.

In Vancouver, researchers want to open a clinic at 659 East Hastings that
would operate from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week. The supervised
injection site is at 139 East Hastings.

Eighty-eight participants would receive prescribed heroin while 70 would
get oral methadone. Each patient would undergo treatment for 15 months-a
year of active treatment, followed by three months of methadone or
abstinence for injection participants. After injecting, patients would be
observed for 30 minutes before being allowed to leave. Staff would also ask
if they need counselling.

City hall is currently considering an application to allow the East
Hastings site to be used.

Joe Chaput, who lives near the proposed site, maintains it will be bad for
the neighbourhood. He points out the proposed clinic is next door to a
social housing project for recovering alcohol and drug addicts, and about a
block away from an elementary school.

"The documentation states that 'this project will have no more impact on
the community than any other medical facility'," he wrote to the city.
"Meanwhile, up to 30 people per hour could be leaving the building after
taking their prescribed heroin. That's way worse than anything I know of
around here."

Chaput is also concerned that residents only have until Oct. 24 to submit
written responses to the city and that the notice he received was only
written in English. Project facilitator Michael Mortensen, however, said
the city has now translated the information into Chinese and plans to send
out a second notice this week with a two-week response deadline.

Kathy Sayers, national coordinator for the trial, says researchers want to
start the study by next March but need Health Canada's approval and a
licence to bring the drugs into the country. Sayers said researchers have
spent almost two years looking for a suitable location-of more than 25
potential sites, only two were zoned for medical use.

She emphasized the clinic's clients will be stable. Study participants must
also have lived in the community before the trial begins."It's basically
taking people that have serious addiction problems off the street and these
people are already in their neighbourhood."

Charles Parker, president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users,
supports the initiative. "If you have heroin addicts coming there and
receiving a dose from a prescribed source, they're not going to be in your
neighbourhood committing crimes and leaving syringes all over."