German
Doctors
Vote
in
Favor
of
Heroin
Prescription
4/10/98
The British Medical Journal (4/4) reported that the German Medical Council has voted unanimously in favor of allowing heroin to be prescribed to long-term addicts. The issue will now go to the Minister of Justice, with the Council's recommendation, for approval. Council member Dr. Ingo Flenker told the BMJ that the doctors were influenced by the results of the Swiss maintenance trials, in which over 1,000 addicts were given access to the drug over a three year period. The results of that experiment are considered by the Swiss to be overwhelmingly positive, with marked improvement in housing, employment, admissions to treatment, health and mortality among participants. The BMJ further reports that a poll, taken by the German newspaper Die Woche, found that 55% of Germans support making the drug available to hard core addicts under a doctor's supervision. Dr. Ethan Nadelmann, Director of the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy think tank, told the Week Online, "The Swiss experiment proved that heroin maintenance can be a successful part of an overall policy aimed at reducing the harms of substance abuse both to the user and to society. It is truly encouraging that the German Medical Council has followed the science, rather than ideology in making this recommendation. With more and more countries, Australia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg and now Germany expressing interest in replicating the Swiss model, and assuming that the results of future trials are similar to what we have already seen, it's going to be difficult for countries like the U.S. to continue to denigrate this modality and to dismiss it out of hand." (The First International Conference on Heroin Maintenance will take place on June 6, at the New York Academy of Medicine, 5th Ave. and 103rd St. in Manhattan. For information, contact the Lindesmith Center at (212) 548-0695 or e-mail [email protected].) If you missed our story on how Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved of heroin maintenance, check it out at http://www.drcnet.org/rapid/1997/9-28-1.html#switzerland. And if you missed our story on back-door U.S. pressure on Australia to not conduct a similar trial, check it out at http://www.drcnet.org/rapid/1997/7-24-1.html#blackmail.
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