Danes Want Heroin Pills for Addicts

Heroin safer in pill form? Danes thinks so. (www.wikimedia.org)

In remarks reported by the Copenhagen Post Sunday, Danish Health Minister Astrid Krag announced that she is proposing that heroin in pill form be made available to addicts. Denmark is one of a handful of European countries that provide maintenance doses of heroin to addicts, but to this point, the drug was only available for injection.

It is time to offer users a safer choice, Krag said, adding that the pills should be available next year. She said Danish Board of Health had evidence to believe making heroin available in pill form would reduce the risks of disease and overdose.

“With tablets, we get a tool that lessens the risk of incorrect dosages, injuries and incidences of cancer,” she explained.  This will be an improvement of the current system. It clearly needs to be in place by 2013

The Danish government approved heroin maintenance in 2008, with the first clinic opening in 2010. There are now five of them. A supervised injection site is set to open in the Copenhagen neighborhood of Vesterbro later this year. In the meantime, a mobile injection site is zooming around the neighborhood.

Opposition conservative party spokespersons said they were open to the proposal, but wondered how it would be paid for. But spokespersons for the government Socialistisk Folkeparti said that was just politics.

“It is remarkable that [the conservative opposition] says that financing must be in place before you make a proposal,” said Jonas Dahl, health spokesman for the Socialists. “The working procedure has always been that we first get a professional recommendation from the Board of Health and then find the money.”

Article republished from Stop the Drug War under Creative Commons Licensing