They’re offered health services and support that’s meant to curb use over time, but there’s no restriction on how long a user can remain in heroin-assisted treatment.
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Experts have noted that the pool of eligible opiate-dependent Canadians is small, and the new regulations do not allow anyone to walk into a shop and purchase heroin either with a prescription or at their leisure.
Former Canadian Health Minister Rona Ambrose removed diacetylmorphine from the federal Special Access Program in October of 2013. “In a 2009 article in the New York Times about the benefits of legal heroin – then a fairly new idea in the science community – one doctor summed up the biggest problem with methadone maintenance: “[Many] patients don’t want to take it; they just don’t like it”. It enables them to focus, instead, on improving their quality of life and drug rehabilitation programs, research conducted in Europe, Israel and other parts of the world shows. Because fentanyl is so potent, it’s easier for drug dealers to make more money with it, so they cut heroin with it, Oviedo-Joekes explained. Supervised heroin therapy is used in several countries, including Switzerland, Germany and The Netherlands, stated the media. “It’s the United States that’s way behind the curve”.
It provides diacetylmorphine to 52 addicts under a special court-ordered exemption, but expects that number to double over the next year if supplies can be obtained.
The amendment was included in light of the country’s opioid overdose crisis, stated the Canadian daily, and prescription heroin treatment allows health-care providers to treat patients with chronic dependency. “Methadone works very well as a first-line treatment”.
In April, the results of a study led by researchers at Providence Health Care and the University of British Columbia among others, were published in the Journal of American Medical Association Psychiatry.
Others, like Parlimentarian and Conservative party spokesman on health policy Colin Carrie, are staunchly opposed to prescription heroin as an addiction treatment option.
‘And that they are not limiting the range of treatment options that are available.
“Hydromorphone and diacetylmorphine are both safe when taken in a clinical setting”.
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Severe addicts can now be prescribed legal heroin in Canada. Out of a total of 88,451 injections, there were 14 overdoses and 11 seizures, all successfully managed in the clinic.
