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Germany Takes Next Step: Heroin Maintenance Trial to Start in February

DRCNet, http://www.drcnet.org

The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue #201

Friday 31 Aug 2001

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The German government deepened its ambivalent embrace of harm
reduction approaches to that nation's hard drug problem last
week. According to the Associated Press, on August 22, German
authorities signed on to a test project that will distribute
heroin to hundreds of hardcore heroin users. According to German
government estimates, there are about 120,000 addicted heroin
users in the country.

This is only the latest step in Germany's evolving approach to
hard drug use. Local authorities in a number of German cities,
most notably Frankfort, had for years tolerated safe injection
rooms as a means of reducing injection-related harm. Early last
year, the Bundestag moved to formalize and legalize the safe-
injection rooms. That move came after a Social Democrat-Green
coalition took power from the conservatives, who had refused
throughout the 1980s and 1990s to legalize the rooms.

In the program, which will include psychological counseling, half
of the 1,220 participating heroin users will receive heroin. The
other half will receive methadone. The program will last two
years and will extend across the country.

German Drugs Commissioner Marion Caspers-Merk told the AP the
program would attempt to reach heroin users who had been left out
of previous programs. Earlier this year, Caspers-Merk told the
European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction that 50%
of German heroin addicts were receiving drug treatment.

Authorities hope to improve the health of heroin users and also
curb the crime associated with the illegal drug trade, Dr. Ingo
Flenker told the AP. Flenker, head of the German doctors'
association committee on drugs and addiction, added that
authorities had not yet determined a price tag for the project.

 

 

 

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