Heroin Prescription Feasibility, Safety and Efficacy

Heroin Prescription Feasibility, Safety and Efficacy

December 9th, Victoria

4:30pm in Room 110, Harry Hickman Building, University of Victoria.

David Marsh, Physician Leader, Addiction Medicine for the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority will speak on the Vancouver site of the CIHR-funded North American Opiate Medications Initiative (NAOMI) that will provide injectable pharmaceutical-grade heroin to 88 injection drug users.

The 21-month study, also being conducted in Toronto and Montreal, will test whether heroin is more effective than methadone in helping chronic users who are not responding to conventional treatment options.

Dr. Marsh is one of the investigators on this project. His talk will review the development of plans for a Canadian Heroin Prescription trial. He will also review the results of the Swiss and Dutch heroin trials and the planning for the process that led up the starting of the Canadian trials.

Dr. Marsh is also Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Health Care and Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine at UBC. He is presently involved in the North American Opiate Medication Initiative (NAOMI) trial of prescription heroin, an Interdisciplinary Health Research Team on Illicit Opiate Dependence in Canada funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and an evaluation of the Supervised Injection Site in Vancouver.