Russia's 'cold turkey' approach highlights global divide over drug treatment at UN

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Russia's 'cold turkey' approach highlights global divide over drug treatment at UN

21 April 2016

By Jessica Glenza - The Guardian

As international leaders debated global drug law at the United Nations, a bizarre panel on heroin treatment showed just how divided countries are over how to treat addicts.

The panel, sponsored by the Russian Federation, began with an international group of scientists and diplomats explaining the importance of evidence-based drug treatment, before a Russian doctor veered into addiction science denialism.

“We prefer to treat people in a drug-free setting,” Dr Oxana Guseva, a medical representative of the Russian Federation, told the Guardian afterward, “because methadone is the same narcotic drug as heroin.”

In Russia, heroin addicts are given “cold turkey” detoxification treatment using the medication Naltrexone, which blocks opioid receptors in the brain. Typically, this medication is used to stop overdoses.

Then, Guseva said, Russian addicts are given social therapy and education as a substitute for conventional opioid replacement therapies, such as methadone clinics, which are common in the United States.

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