Canada starts prescribing heroin to people dependent on drugs

Doctors in Vancouver, Canada, have become the first medics in North America to administer prescription heroin to drug dependents. The treatment will only be given to a group of patients who failed to respond to traditional therapies.

“For this group the addiction is so severe that no other treatment has been effective,” David Byres, vice president of acute clinical programs at Providence Health Care, told Canadian media. “The goal is stabilization,” The Globe and Mail Newspaper cited Byres as saying. The program will be performed in Providence Crosstown Clinic in Canadian city.

Byres added that the treatment is only prescribed for those patients for whom traditional therapies such as methadone have failed to work at least 11 times. Canadian doctors are trying the treatment on a group of 202 patients, of which 120 have received diacetylmorphine (heroin) prescriptions.

However, only 26 drug dependents will get their first heroin treatment next week, as so far there are only enough drugs for that number of people.

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