Legalt heroin

Heroin

"Unlike alcohol or tobacco, heroin causes no ongoing toxicity to the tissues or organs of the body. Apart from causing some constipation, it appears to have no side effects in most who take it. When administered safely, its use may be consistent with a long and productive life. The principal harm comes from the risk of overdose, problems with injecting, drug impurities and adverse legal or financial consequences."

(Byrne, Andrew, MD, "Addict in the Family: How to Cope with the Long Haul" (Redfern, NSW, Australia: Tosca Press, 1996), pp. 33-34, available on the web)

"People rarely die from heroin overdoses - meaning pure concentrations of the drug which simply overwhelm the body's responses."

(Peele, Stanton, MD, (1998), "The persistent, dangerous myth of heroin overdose." The Stanton Peele Addiction Website.)

"Long-term effects of the opioids themselves are minimal; even decades of methadone use appear to be well tolerated physiologically, although some long-term opioid users experience chronic constipation, excessive sweating, peripheral edema, drowsiness, and decreased libido. However, many long-term users who inject opioids have adverse effects from contaminants (eg, talc) and adulterants (eg, nonprescription stimulant drugs); cardiac, pulmonary, and hepatic damage from infections such as HIV infection and hepatitis B or C, which are spread by needle sharing and nonsterile injection techniques."

(Opioids," The Merck Manual, Section 15: Psychiatric Disorders, Chapter 198: Drug Use and Dependence, Merck & Co. Inc. July 2008)


Drugwar Facts - Heroinförskrivning

Nevertheless, a few countries, including the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Iceland, Malta, Canada and Switzerland, continue to use heroin (diamorphine) for general medical purposes, mostly in hospital settings (usually for severe pain relief). Until recently, however, Britain was the only country that allowed doctors to prescribe heroin for the treatment of drug dependence."

Prescribing heroin - What is the evidence?

The German model project for heroin assisted treatment of opioid dependent patients - A multi-centre, randomised, controlled treatment study

The Lancet (sammanfattning) - Supervised injectable heroin or injectable methadone versus optimised oral methadone as treatment for chronic heroin addicts in England after persistent failure in orthodox treatment (RIOTT): a randomised trial

What the World Can Learn from Drug Policy Change in Switzerland

Incidence of heroin use in Zurich, Switzerland

Long-term Impacts of the Swiss Heroin Prescription Trials on Crime of Treated Heroin Users