Word: trialing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Following the lead of Switzerland and a handful of other countries, Britain recently concluded a four-year trial in which longtime addicts were given daily heroin injections as part of a treatment program to eventually wean them off the drug. Now, with results showing the trial succeeded in reducing street-drug use and crime among participants, Britain could soon become only the second country in Europe to institutionalize the program. That would mean permanent, state-funded heroin clinics would be set up across the country to treat the most heavily addicted people. (See pictures of the dark path of drugs...
...trial, which was conducted in the cities of London, Darlington and Brighton, researchers divided the 127 participants into three groups, giving one group heroin and giving the other two intravenous methadone and oral methadone. Although all three groups showed improved physical and mental health thanks to the counseling and social services offered by the clinics, the heroin-using group fared much better than the others. After half a year, three-quarters had largely stopped taking street heroin. And the number of crimes committed by those in the group dropped from 1,700 in the 30 days before the program began...
...taken up by either looking for money or taking drugs." But by going to the clinic every day to inject heroin, she received help finding housing and battling her depression and had time to become a mentor for inmates being released from jail. Within the first year of the trial, Sarah had reduced her injections from twice a day to once, and she recently quit heroin altogether in favor of a mixture of morphine and methadone. She hopes to be off the drugs soon, crediting her resolve to the program's nonjudgmental attitude. "It was the right decision...
...that have experimented with it, such as Germany, the Netherlands and Canada. This is largely because Britain already has heroin on the books as a medication and, most crucially, because the program has strong political backing. The government has already said it would keep the clinics open provided the trial showed positive results. Paul Hayes, head of the National Treatment Agency, stressed in the Guardian newspaper this month that the clinics would only be available to a "very small proportion" of the 160,000 heroin addicts in treatment...
...Sarah hopes the program's future is decided quickly so that those in her treatment group can hang on to their newfound stability. "That's the one downside about this treatment - the insecurity, knowing that it's still a trial," she says...