Vancouver study finds free heroin reduces crime: BC reviewing Study

Regardless of how people have gotten to the point where they are addicted to drugs, the issue that our community needs to deal with is how as a society we help treat these people with an addiction. To sweep the problem away under the guise that it's an individual choice and therefore not my problem, is our societies' greatest failure. We do not tell heart disease patients that they deserved their current state of health because they chose a stagnant unhealthy lifestyle. We don't judge them and tell them that they do not have the right to seek treatment. Neither is poverty a product of the poor's inability to find work or education.

Addiction, whether you believe it to be a moral or immoral, is ultimately a disease that needs to be treated like heart disease, cancer, depression, etc. It is a mental health and physical health problem, which also leads to societal issues that we all share in.

The North American Opiate Medication Initiative is one of several studies around the world that have looked at alternative ways to treat heroin addiction including heroin assisted treatment. We need to understand the facts of what NAOMI is about before we reject it. Heroin assisted treatment is about controlling the quality and quantity of drug used by its patients.  When we take street drugs (which are often laced with many different kinds of chemicals and often used in a very unsafe environment leading to the spread of HIV, HEP C) out of the equation and provide safe clean heroin used in a controlled environment under medical supervision, we not only control a person's use of the drug, but we dramatically reduce overdose and the spread of HIV and HEP C. The economic costs of offering heroin assisted treatment further significantly reduces crime and the burden on healthcare for these patients. They do not need to commit crimes in the city to be able to purchase street drugs, and overdose and treatment of HIV and HEP is reduced dramatically, relieving a tremendous amount of tax dollars that would go to secondary issues related to street drug use.

Further, NAOMI is a treatment space where these individuals who often have mental illness and suffer tremendous societal difficulties can access doctors, social workers, and psychologists. Through heroin assisted treatment, these individuals gain a certain amount of stability in their lives. Even though they remain dependent on drugs, this treatment brings them into the treatment system so that they can receive help to deal with the various complicated problems they face in their lives, including housing.

Harm reduction is about humanity. It is about health.  It is about finding ways to treat a problem that society has neglected for much too long in a way that recognizes the challenges and needs of the patient group.  The "it's a choice and therefore not my problem attitude", IS the problem. We have to start looking at the problem of drugs in Vancouver as a health problem and to start thinking of ways to support individuals who suffer from it. Poverty, health, housing, security are all interrelated. NAOMI attempts to tackle the problem from the health perspective, but the results trickle into every aspect of patient's lives, and into the wellbeing of the community.

Get educated about it: http://www.naomistudy.ca/

I would love to see your passion defending the so-called tax payers money when the goverment buy guns or allow rich people to get richer.  I do not expect you would take the time and the effor that nessachu did, reading and getting educated, but I expect respect.

Sounds crazy, heroin for heroin addicts. I know. You said: 'that is the same as giving a heart patient  a cheeseburger instead of a Big Mac'.  I never heard that a doctor denied treatment to this patients when he or she actually eats a burguer, getting worst and then, going to the hospital again, getting free medications, free attention. But for addicted people you have a full loaded gun, ready to shoot them, or putting them in a ship heading neverland.  Why we do not do that to all the people we do not like? Oh, let me remind you, people thinking like you wanted to do the same for AIDS patients back in the '80s. Yes, let's deny health care to every person whose life style is not approved by... you? Ok, if you are diabetic and you eat suggar, the goverment should not provide you treatment.  Also, if you have a heart condition and do not excercise, and so on.

You do not have to like 'junkies', but they have the rights.  Treatment is one of them. As far as I followed the discussion, you did not even read what heroin treatment is about.  You just don't understand it and in a very dangerous way, you just comment on something about you have no clue.

Wish I had said that EastVan

Well, any taxpayer that is informed understands that this program is an incredible step to reducing tolls and costs to them will support this idea. Any person versed in science and the scientific process understands that efficacy is more important than frivolous token statements like 'tough on crime'. Any historian will tell you that reusing methods that have failed in the past, over and over and over again, like 'lock them up for a long time and give the job training', is neither helpful, beneficial, or cost effective. And any one who has ever been through true hardship (keep in mind TRUE) would know better than to offer the 'suck it up' attitude.

This treatment program is one of the greatest programs in drug treatment that I have ever seen. It is incredible, just how far in front of the times it is, by comparison to other interventions and treatments. The only reason it may not be used is because it's counterintuitive. People who look only at the surface of the program: giving free drugs to addicts, will probably respond with ignorant comments much like your own. Anyone who understands the issue, as many people that I affiliate do, marvel at this new treatment. Though I say 'new' it's not really, pure nicotine infusement has been used for smokers... but I guess maybe you're right, why bother giving these people a treatment that works and that benefits both them and us? Let's just throw the dregs in jail!?!?  Right?!?!

This program works. Bottom line.