The Texas Legislature is currently considering bills that would allow the establishment of programs to enable injecting drug users to exchange used syringes for sterile ones, as a proven means of reducing the spread of blood-borne diseases. The Senate version of the bill has already passed, by a vote of 23-6. An almost identical bill….
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Programs that give drug addicts access to clean needles have been shown the world over to slow the spread of deadly diseases including H.I.V./AIDS and hepatitis. Public health experts were relieved when President Obama announced his support for ending a ban on federal funding for such programs. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama’s message seems not to have….
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Voters in Switzerland go to the polls on Sunday to decide whether to make a controversial heroin prescription programme a permanent, nationwide health policy. The Swiss government supports the idea but opponents say it encourages drug addiction, and sends the wrong message to young people. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s Switzerland had one of….
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Vancouver’s supervised drug injection site can save the Canadian health-care system as much as $20 million and substantially increase a population’s life span over a 10-year period, according to a study to be published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The study, which used a computer simulation model, measured the projected impacts on Vancouver….
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A University of B.C. epidemiologist says there is now evidence to support a heroin-assisted addictions therapy clinic in Vancouver. The North American Opiate Medication Initiative, or NAOMI, study was a Vancouver and Montreal-based clinical trial assessing how patients respond to heroin, methadone and other opiate treatment. The three-year study treated 251 of the most chronically….
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Canada’s Health Minister urgently needs an education in harm reduction. Announcing his intention to shut down Insite, the supervised injection facility serving drug addicts in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Tony Clement told the House of Commons health committee that “supervised injection is not medicine; it does not heal the person addicted to drugs.” Mr. Clement got….
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