Heroin

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to help balance the budget by cutting out almost all Medi-Cal funding for more than 35,000 methadone maintenance patients. The nicest thing opponents can say about that idea is that it's penny wise but pound foolish, and the legislature seems to agree. But the Governator can still wield the line-item veto, so the fight isn't over yet.

Britishers researchers are calling on the government to roll out heroin maintenance programs for chronic addicts who don't respond to other treatments. They've just released a new clinical study that makes their case.

Reed College in Portland, Oregon, has a decades-old reputation for rigorous academics and counterculture values. Now, after two Reed students died of heroin overdoses in two years, state and federal prosecutors are lowering the boom, starting with this weekends' annual end of school-year party.

San Francisco has become only the second city in America to host a drug user union, after New York City. But the movement is spreading internationally.

The leader of Britain's largest nurses' union has called for prescribing heroin to addicts through the National Health Service. His union debated the issue this week, but made no decision.

One of the side-effects of prohibition is contamination of unregulated illicit drug supplies, putting users at risk. Two now familiar, but disturbing, contaminants are in the news this week: anthrax in European heroin and levamisole in North American cocaine.

The illegal drug supply is increasing, and Mexican narcos are public enemy #1, according to the Justice Department's primary drug intelligence unit. There's no end in sight, the unit concludes.

Being a thoughtful, compassionate, and curious physician dealing with hard-core addicts in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside makes Dr. Gabor Maté especially well-placed to write an important book about addiction. He has done so. You should read it.

This week, Denmark became the latest European country to embrace heroin maintenance for hard-users. A clinic opened Monday in Copenhagen.

The European death toll from heroin apparently contaminated with anthrax has risen to 11 as England reported its first death Wednesday. There have been nine more in Scotland and one more in Germany, leading to fears the contamination is widespread. The official response is still mainly limited to telling users to stop.