HEROIN STUDY SHORT OF 72 HARD-CORE USERS

Vancouver, Montreal Researchers Provide Free Doses Of Drug To
Compatible Participants

(CP) It's a chance to cut the chain that keeps addicts tied to a
routine of daily degradation.

The North American Opiate Medication Initiative, known as NAOMI, is
offering hundreds of junkies in Vancouver and Montreal the chance to
join a research study that provides free heroin.

But they're not biting.

NAOMI needs 157 participants in each city. Nearly a year into
recruitment, only 85 have signed up and met the criteria for
participation, which critics say are too strict. This has pushed back
results by 10 months.

Scientists want to know if hard-core addicts can live more healthy
and productive lives with free, measured doses of heroin, a drug that
is not harmful to the body.

Heroin is addictive, and overdosing on it will kill brain cells due
to oxygen deprivation. But otherwise, the drug is safe, says B.C.'s
Medical Health Officer Perry Kendall.

"Heroin, if it's used on a maintenance basis, in pharmacological
doses without any risk of overdose or contamination, is actually a
very safe drug," he said.

"About the only side-effects that you find in the literature, other
than addiction, are chronic constipation, diminution of sex drive, a
very dry mouth, which can result in poor oral hygiene."

He says heroin use doesn't knock years off people's lives. "It
doesn't harm the liver, doesn't harm the kidneys per se, and it
doesn't kill brain cells unless you overdose and run out of oxygen,"
Kendall says.

What kills is the addiction and the all-out fight to get the illegal drug.

The lifestyle takes a frightening toll, says Mark Townsend, director
of the Portland Hotel Society, an organization that provides housing
and help for drug users.

He says the hard-core users NAOMI wants are so marginalized they can
be impossible to reach.

The participants must be older than 25, have been hard-core users for
five years, have used every day for the past year, not be on
probation and live within a kilometre of the project's location -- in
Vancouver, the Downtown Eastside.

The researchers running NAOMI thought it would be an easy choice for
addicts: Take free heroin and be involved in a study -- offering a
break from crime -- in exchange for the drugs their bodies are
addicted to. Few came forward.

But people who have got involved are making gains. "It's still too
early to draw hard conclusions, but so far we're seeing improvements
among participants," says Dr. David Marsh, a scientist working on the study.