Prisons and jails are crammed with inmates with a history of substance abuse. In order to support a heroin habit many addicts resort to crime, and in some cases to violence, to obtain money to feed their insatiable appetitive for dope. Often someone with a serious substance abuse problem will go right back to getting high after release from custody. Methadone programs have been proven to help addicts by giving them the opportunity to receive a medication that, along with counseling, can put a former addict on the road to recovery and a “normal” life.
But there are those “intractable” heroin addicts that are not able to successfully complete a methadone program. For these individuals, medical heroin, diacetylmorphine, can be a more effective, and less costly, treatment, according to a recent article in by Drug War Chronicles on the website stopthedrugwar.org.
The plan to use medical heroin as a treatment tool is controversial. Drug War Chronicles reports that the conservative members of the Canadian government oppose the idea of administering heroin to intractable addicts in a clinic setting. But Dr. Martin Schechter, an epidemiologist and co-author of the report Cost-Effectiveness of Diacetylmorphine Versus Methadone for Chronic Opioid Dependence Refractory to Treatment stated "The fact is that these people are taking heroin right now. They're in the back alleys in the Downtown Eastside, they're buying the heroin on the street, contributing to the black market and crime and violence," he said. "And they're not in any treatment and they're costing the system lots and lots of money. So our proposal says rather than having them do that in the back alley, why don't we attract them into a clinic where they will be in contact with doctors and nurses and counselors, we stabilize them by getting them out of a life of crime." If program participants get out of a life of crime” that means less people in prison and a lower recidivism rate.
The report Cost-Effectiveness of Diacetylmorphine Versus Methadone for Chronic Opioid Dependence Refractory to Treatment can be found in the Library section of the Reentry Central website.
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