The push for prescription heroin

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A clinic that hands out prescription heroin to severe addicts is pushing expansion as the best way to curb the ever-increasing number of fentanyl overdoses in BC and beyond.

Doctors there say the evidence is irrefutable.

Clinical trials have already found the drug works better than standard methadone treatment and it’s already prescribed in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

“I think it’s essential if we’re going to deal with this crisis. Getting everybody into treatment is certainly our goal. This is only for this most severely affected group that will not be attracted into care by anything except prescription heroin,” says Dr. Scott MacDonald with the Providence Crosstown Clinic in Gastown.

“We provide prescription heroin that patients self-administer under the supervision of a nurse. And they can come here two or three times a day.”

Staff will be there to supervise in the event the drugs are mixed with anything that could trigger an overdose.

But MacDonald says it is the ability to get people into treatment who otherwise would never seek it out that is one of the real advantages of the clinic.

“We have social workers and councilors to provide HIV care, Hepatitis C care, to work on all the multitude of problems both physical and mental that people have accumulated over their lives that have led them the to their opioid use disorder.”

MacDonald has even consulted in the US about pushing the program south of the border.

“Just like here in BC, we need to look at every tool in the tool kit to get everybody into care that needs it and for some people, that’s going to be an intensified treatment option like prescription heroin.”