The D'Alliance: Personal Views on Drug Policy

Study Backs Heroin Maintenance Treatment

Thursday, August 20, 2009

If the government is looking for a way to cut spending, reduce crime, and save lives, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has the answer. Unfortunately, it's probably not the kind of answer most politicians will even consider.

The Canadian study shows that prescription heroin is an effective treatment for addiction when all other treatments, including methadone maintenance, fail.

Participants in the study, all heavy users who had not responded to other treatment methods, were divided in two groups with one group receiving methadone and the other receiving diacetylmorphine, the active ingredient in heroin, over a three-year period. The patients who received heroin were more likely to stay in treatment, and they cut back on illicit drug use at a higher rate than the methadone recipients.

The study shows that in addition to effectively curbing drug use in a population previously written off as a lost cause, prescription heroin treatment prevents crime because users are less likely to look for drugs off the street. And locking fewer people up for drug-related offenses saves a lot of money.

Opponents of heroin maintenance programs now have to come face to face with concrete proof that prescribing heroin does not, as they claim, encourage drug use. But doctor-prescribed heroin doesn't sell well, which is why no matter how many studies come out, we need to work toward an ideological shift on drugs and drug use if we want to bring heroin maintenance programs to the U.S.