ADDICTS TO GET HEROIN UNDER RESEARCH PROJECT

VANCOUVER -- A federal-government agency will give doctors money to provide
heroin to about 125 drug addicts in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, under
a national research project searching for an effective way to cut crime and
control the cost of caring for injection-drug users.

The usually illegal drug could be offered by next summer to people who have
been addicted more than a year, said Mark Tyndall, program director of
epidemiology at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. He said
yesterday that addicts in the program must have tried at least twice to get
off heroin by using the substitute drug methadone. Under the Narcotics
Control Act, heroin can be prescribed by doctors to patients in hospital.

The addicts will receive the drug under medical supervision twice a day --
if they wish, three times a day -- for a year. To qualify they must agree
to stay in hospital for 30 minutes of observation after injecting the heroin.

An additional 125 addicts will be offered "augmented" methadone if they
agree to serve as the control group for the study, Dr. Tyndall said.
Traditional methadone treatment eliminates an addict's desire for heroin
without providing the high. Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen unveiled the city's
plans for the drug trials during a presentation yesterday to the Senate
special committee on illegal drugs.

An official for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which is
funding the clinical trials, said from Ottawa that the project has a few
hurdles to leap before receiving final approval.

A formal announcement is expected in early December, he said. A Vancouver
city official said full funding for the clinical trials has not been confirmed.

Researchers want about $7-million but have received only about $4-million.
If additional funds are not found, researchers may have to trim the number
of addicts in the study, a researcher said. The east side of downtown
Vancouver may have the densest concentration of injection-drug addicts in
the world, he said. One-third of the drug users in his study are HIV
positive and more than 90 per cent are infected with hepatitis C.