SALOME

Health advocates were in BC Supreme Court this week arguing five patients should be allowed access to prescription heroin to manage their addictions — despite recent changes to federal laws. 

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A group of addicts in Vancouver who were part of a clinical trial examining the use of prescription heroin have won a temporary injunction that will allow them to continue accessing the drug at least until a court challenge is heard.

The ruling, issued Thursday by a B.C. Supreme Court judge, is the second time in recent months that courts have interfered with Ottawa's attempt to rein in the medical use of otherwise illegal drugs.

Entrenched addicts who were prescribed heroin as part of a B.C.-based clinical trial will be able to continue receiving the drug while a larger constitutional challenge is before the courts.

B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson released his decision on Thursday, finding risks associated with severe heroin addiction “will be reduced if [the addicts] receive injectable diacetylmorphine (heroin) treatment from Providence physicians.These potential harms are clearly irreparable in nature.”

Andrea Woo Reports

THE B.C. SUPREME Court has granted an injunction that lets doctors give prescription heroin to select patients in Vancouver.

According to a 34-page decision, Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson found that risks faced by the opiate addicts acting as plaintiffs in the case would be reduced if doctors were allowed to administer diacetylmorphine (prescription heroin).

An interim order Thursday of the B.C. Supreme Court allowing former participants of a medical heroin study to continue to receive the drug from doctors brings sanity to the drug debate and offers a reasonable way forward for drug policy in Canada.

A battle between B.C. doctors and the federal government over the prescription of heroin to severely addicted users is set to enter Supreme Court.

A local health authority and a legal rights group take their fight to court Tuesday to keep a heroin program alive after the federal government cracked down on doctors prescribing hard drugs.

Providence Health Care and the Pivot Legal Society are pushing for an injunction that would allow the former to maintain its SALOME treatment program that was serving more than 200 people.

Douglas King of Pivot said that since the federal government imposed changes last year, recovering addicts exiting the treatment portion have been unable to continue taking the clinical heroin.

Providence Health Care enters the B.C. Supreme Court with a request that doctors be allowed to prescribe a special class of patients diacetylmorphine, or pharmaceutical heroin.

Federal health minister Rona Ambrose has strongly opposed the plan to provide heroin-assisted therapy in Vancouver.