Uttalande från Drug Watch International om tyska heroinprogrammet
Besides being inconsistent with treaty obligations (1961, 1971, and 1988 United Nations conventions), allowing personal use amounts of banned drugs such as heroin will not accomplish what Commissioner Bätzing hopes to accomplish.
The reason for this is quite simple and was discovered in the mid-1960s by Drs. Vincent Dole and Marie Nyswander at Rockefeller University in New York.
The pharmacokinetics of heroin are quite different from those of methadone. Heroin has a very short half-life, thus requiring addicts to self-inject thedrug several times a day, usually at four-hour intervals.
Methadone, by comparison, has an extremely lengthy half-life of 24 or more hours, meaning that at
24 hours, about half the drug dose taken remains active and is producing an effect.
Although both are powerful opioids and can be substituted for each other, methadone is less reinforcing and, therefore, less likely to produce cravings and tolerance to the same degree and intensity as heroin.
Moreover, the chief benefit to using methadone is the ability of the addict to take a single oral dose – as opposed to an injection of heroin – once a day. This generally allows addicts to resume a near-normal social life and hold a job, etc. Over the long term, cessation of drug use is a possibility but not a specific goal of methadone maintenance programs.
The German plan that is described as a “last hope” may be geared for the addict whose situation is terminal. Giving such addicts heroin would, of course, hasten the inevitable.
If the concept of a “heroin hospice” is a sad idea, so, too, is the fact that after more than a century of searching for a “cure” for heroin addiction, we’ve come no closer to a solution and must settle for this form of incremental state-sponsored euthanasia. Not lost in all this is the irony that methadone was invented by German chemists during World War II, after allied forces cut off vital supplies of opium and morphine base from Turkey.
The brilliance of those scientists to be able to synthesize an important and cheap substitute drug in a
very short time shows us what can be done when minds are focused on solving a problem rather than simply pushing it off to the next generation.
John J. Coleman
President
Drug Watch International
The reason for this is quite simple and was discovered in the mid-1960s by Drs. Vincent Dole and Marie Nyswander at Rockefeller University in New York.
The pharmacokinetics of heroin are quite different from those of methadone. Heroin has a very short half-life, thus requiring addicts to self-inject thedrug several times a day, usually at four-hour intervals.
Methadone, by comparison, has an extremely lengthy half-life of 24 or more hours, meaning that at
24 hours, about half the drug dose taken remains active and is producing an effect.
Although both are powerful opioids and can be substituted for each other, methadone is less reinforcing and, therefore, less likely to produce cravings and tolerance to the same degree and intensity as heroin.
Moreover, the chief benefit to using methadone is the ability of the addict to take a single oral dose – as opposed to an injection of heroin – once a day. This generally allows addicts to resume a near-normal social life and hold a job, etc. Over the long term, cessation of drug use is a possibility but not a specific goal of methadone maintenance programs.
The German plan that is described as a “last hope” may be geared for the addict whose situation is terminal. Giving such addicts heroin would, of course, hasten the inevitable.
If the concept of a “heroin hospice” is a sad idea, so, too, is the fact that after more than a century of searching for a “cure” for heroin addiction, we’ve come no closer to a solution and must settle for this form of incremental state-sponsored euthanasia. Not lost in all this is the irony that methadone was invented by German chemists during World War II, after allied forces cut off vital supplies of opium and morphine base from Turkey.
The brilliance of those scientists to be able to synthesize an important and cheap substitute drug in a
very short time shows us what can be done when minds are focused on solving a problem rather than simply pushing it off to the next generation.
John J. Coleman
President
Drug Watch International
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