Providence Health Care

Drug addicts, Downtown Eastside activists, and medical professionals are taking on the federal government over heroin treatment. They’ve launched a constitutional challenge against Ottawa’s decision to deny the drug.

Five Vancouver-based heroin addicts, along with Pivot Legal Society and Providence Health Care, are launching a constitutional challenge against the federal government’s decision to remove prescription heroin from a drug access program.

A group of five heroin addicts is taking the federal government to court over a controversial decision to remove prescription heroin from a drug access program.

For decades, Larry Love's daily life was consumed by heroin. Find it. Inject it. Repeat. That cycle, he said, was broken last year when he enrolled in a radical clinical trial in Vancouver evaluating the use of prescription heroin, seen as the treatment of last resort for severely addicted people for whom other therapy, such as methadone or detox, have failed.

In regards to the decision of Health Minister Rona Ambrose to block access to pharmaceutical heroin through Health Canada’s Special Access Program, Providence Health Care and five participants in the SALOME study are now seeking to challenge the federal government in court.

For decades, Larry Love's daily life was consumed by heroin. Find it. Inject it. Repeat. That cycle, he said, was broken last year when he enrolled in a radical clinical trial in Vancouver evaluating the use of prescription heroin, seen as the treatment of last resort for severely addicted people for whom other therapy, such as methadone or detox, have failed.

Five people severely addicted to heroin are launching a constitutional challenge to the federal government’s ban on the prescription version of the drug, The Globe and Mail has learned.