Researchers have found a safe, effective treatment for heroin addiction. And that treatment is… heroin (here).
For years, methadone was dispensed to heroin addicts tocurb their withdrawal symptoms while keeping them from attaining the same debilitating opiodid euphoria. The problem with methadone, according to scientists, is that “many patients don’t want to take it; they just don’t like it.”
So, if the heroin addicts don’t like methadone, what do they like? Turns out, they like heroin.
In a study that compared the treatment of heroin addicts with methadone versus the treatment of heroin addicts with daily injections of heroin, after a year, 88 percent of the heroin-users were still in the study and two-thirds of them had significantly curtailed their illicit activities, including the use of street drugs.
No doubt the *free daily shots of heroin* probably helped make the heroin treatment a success.
In all seriousness, I applaud the implications of this study: That, if we treat heroin addicts like people with a medical problem by prescribing them heroin in a controlled situation rather than like criminals who have no choice but to satisfy their addiction on the mean streets, they’ll be less likely to overdose, share needles, sell drugs, or rob me.
But also in all seriousness… what is the practical application of the study results? Are the researchers actually proposing that heroin become a prescription drug? This begs the obvious, groan-inducing question: What are they smoking?
