Is Md. ready for 'heroin assisted therapy'?
Taking opioid overdose deaths seriously requires consideration of new policies that get users out of street heroin markets
Monday, April 10, 2017
The idea of giving heroin addicts heroin to keep them from crime and other dangers has never been popular with American politicians. Yet several Western European countries routinely provide pharmaceutical-grade heroin to high-risk users in medically-supervised facilities with minimal problems; the patients in these programs are much less likely to use street heroin when compared with patients in methadone programs. Given the tripling in heroin-related deaths in the last five years, it is time to give this innovation prompt consideration.