Heroin addiction has a high relapse rate.
Most people cannot quit or have no desire to quit
for quite some time.
Some people may undergo abstinence-based treatment programs
several times without obtaining permanent success.
Scientific research has proven that these people
can benefit from the prescription of opiate medications
like methadone or buprenorphine.
However, despite opiate replacement therapy
some addicts continue using street heroin
and engage in criminal activity to get their daily doses.
For these people, a prescription of diacetylmorphine,
otherwise known as heroin has proven to be successful
in improving their social and health situation:
reducing the risks of lethal overdoses, HIV and hepatitis infections,
crime, homelessness and unemployment,
which benefits society as a whole.
Recently, Several countries are providing heroin maintenance programs,
like Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Great Britain.
The quality of life of these heroin users improved so much
that many of them chose to undergo
abstinence based treatment after a time.
In February 2008 the Danish parliament decided
to start a heroin prescription program.
the HCLU's video advocacy team went to investigate.
We estimate that we have about 20 thousand heroin users in Denmark
most of them living in Copenhagen
but they are spread out all over the country.
It seems that even though we have a very liberal
treatment policy in Denmark, there is still a minor group
of drug addicts that would benefit from an offer
with the heroin prescription.
In Switzerland, you have seen that there has been
no surplus recruitment of drug abusers because of heroin treatment.
The users benefit from it in that they do not have to
live in this area making a lot of criminality.
They can go out there, they can have their drugs
and they can try to live a more normal life than they are living today.
And for the citizens and the police,
we hope that it will decrease the level of criminality
in addition to drug users.
We have had the discussion about
starting a heroin prescription program
or having a heroin trial in Denmark for 15 years.
It just seemed endless.
It’s been a very tough debate and sometimes
the debate was just going out of the roof.
At one point some other parliamentarians in government
or one of the parties that supported the government
said that I as a Social Democrat was working together
with the mafia and the criminals because
I was speaking about the prescription of heroin
to drug users as part of a treatment.
Last year, a conservative news paper printed this story about Linda.
Linda is 30 years old and she had been using heroin
for more than a decade.
She was selling sex so she could buy her heroin.
Sometimes it got too hard for her and she got enrolled
in methadone programs here but
that was not good enough for her.
She needed heroin but usually she starts using benzos (benzodiazepine)
and she says that methadone plus benzos is a bit like heroin for her
and then she’s back out there because
she cannot get a benzo prescription.
And she’s selling sex again.
And then she found this client, who is a 71 year old guy,
he pays her in benzos.
He gets the prescription from the doctor
and he pays her in benzos for her sexual services.
But he says himself “I’m a necrophiliac and I need you
to take a handful of these tablets before we’re having sex”
and when she is almost unconscious he is having sex with her.
And that story was a real shock.
It was not as much about Linda or that we can make room for her
or she got included in our society.
It was more like this huge monster turning up behind her
and pushes her into the circle
and this is the triggering factor in Denmark
and the reason why we will start heroin prescription next year.
Evidence does not do it.
They put down a working group who should study the results
from Switzerland and Germany and Netherlands
and go through their experiments and see
if there was a positive effect of this treatment effort.
The conclusion was positive and then it was decided
to make heroin treatment for the Danish drug abusers
in some municipalities and not as a trial but as a treatment
offered to those who need it.
All heroin has to be given supervised.
That is to say that nothing will be on take-home doses
everything has to be taken on the spot.
They have to travel once or twice daily to this clinic
and then it will be given in conjunction with methadone
on a take-home basis and then you have to report
the next day in the clinic and have your next dose
or the next two doses in the clinic.
One of the reasons why we are now trying it out in Denmark
and making it as part of a treatment is because more and more people
just normal citizens were saying why don’t you do this?
Intro speech and subtitles by: Arielle Reid �