Methadone & Other Opiate Maintenance

Voters in Switzerland Sunday easily approved prescribing heroin to addicts, but rejected marijuana legalization.

The Swiss will vote November 30 on whether to decriminalize marijuana and whether to continue the government's ongoing four pillars drug strategy, complete with prescription heroin.

Australians showed strong support for medical marijuana and harm reduction measures in a national survey. Marijuana legalization? Not so much, at least not yet.

A former Navy officer and drug fighter turned drug reformer is running for the state House of Representatives in Connecticut. He's calling for safe injection sites, opiate maintenance, and taxed and regulated marijuana sales, and he could use your help.

For the past three years, a select group of heroin addicts in Vancouver and Montreal have received pharmaceutical grade heroin as part of a pilot heroin maintenance program. Now, the NAOMI program is winding down, the researchers are assembling their reports, and the addicts are back on the streets.

A Scottish think-tank tasked by Parliament with figuring out how to reduce drug-related harm has called for marijuana legalization, safe injection sites, and opiate maintenance.

Denmark could be the next European country to embrace heroin maintenance therapy. The Danish parliament approved a pilot program this week.

While Vietnam is generally noted for dealing with its heroin problem by sentencing traffickers to death, one methadone maintenance program for users is already underway and another one is set to open in Ho Chi Minh City.

Indiana's methadone clinics and patients are under attack in the Indiana legislature -- again. This time, pols want to make clinic patients have designated drivers and test them for marijuana. At least a proposal to bar them from bringing their children to the clinic has died -- for now.

The city of Tel Aviv has proposed a pilot heroin maintenance program for recalcitrant older users. Now it is seeking approval from the Israeli Ministry of Health.