SALOME Launches Pilot Program With Free Heroin For 200 Drug Addicts In Montreal, Vancouver

June 1, 2009 12:43 p.m. EST

Ottawa, Ontario (AHN) - The Study to Assess Longer-term Opioid Medication Effectiveness was launched in Canada which will provide free heroin to 200 drug addicts in Montreal and Vancouver through publicly-funded clinics.

The $1 million three-year pilot test, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, will offer heroin in pill and injectable forms. Ironically, the federal government is engaged in a legal battle with Insite, a supervised injection facility in Vancouver, based on the argument that government money should not be spent on drug use, but to prevent and treat substance addiction.

SALOME is a follow up to the North American Opiate Medication Initiative, also financed by the CIHR to the tune of $8 million, with the nod of Health Canada.

According to the NAOMI study, which released its findings in October 2008, after three years of randomized controlled clinical trial of 251 participants from Vancouver and Montreal a combination of optimized methadone maintenance therapy and heroin assisted therapy as the best ways to bring in and keep individuals difficult to reach and hard-to-treat already considered by society as impossible cases.

Dr. Martin Schechter, NAOMI principal investigator, said in a press statement, "Our data show remarkable retention rates and significant improvement in illicit heroin us, illegal activity and health for participants receiving injection assisted therapy, as well as those assigned to optimized methadone maintenance."

Schechter will also take part in SALOME, which is currently recruiting 200 worst heroin addicts who have not responded to existing addiction treatments and will start the experiment in the two Canadian cities by fall.