Norway mulls using heroin to cut overdose mortality rate

PanARMENIAN.Net - With a change in local government in Oslo, there is an appetite to use radical policies to curb the alarming number of Norwegians who die from heroin overdoses each year, the Associated Press reports.

Alongside traditional replacement therapies, such as methadone, the new left-wing local leaders want to use a medical form of injectable heroin to treat the most at-risk users.

The official goal is to wean them off the drug entirely, but even the most ardent supporters admit the most achievable target is to bring them within a safer environment, while helping to tackle the crime associated with heavy drug use.

"We can't go on criminalizing our drug users. We need the trust between us and the health professionals," said Kim Arnetvedt, an addict and member of the Association for a Humane Drug Policy, a campaign group.

Norway has the worst heroin mortality rate in Western Europe with 70 drug deaths per million inhabitants in 2013, according to the EU's drugs watchdog, the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drugs Addiction. In the continent as a whole, Norway trails only Estonia, with 127 deaths per million. The average is 16.

A small number of addicts are either too suspicious or immune to the methadone to start treatment at all.