Vancouver clinic to offer prescription heroin>

Researchers hope to test new approach to drug treatment>

Updated: 4:36 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2005> VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Vancouver adds prescription heroin for> hard-core addicts to its arsenal in the war against drugs this week,

Medical researchers with the new clinic, North America's first trial of> prescription heroin, say their motives are not political. They hope to

The clinic starts taking applicants from drug addicts wanting to join the> program on Thursday.>

Vancouver, on Canada's Pacific coast, is already the focus of a debate

Martin Schechter, lead researcher for the North American Opiate Medication> Initiative, said the new government-funded study is not designed to

"We're not an advocacy group. We're researchers looking at a medical and> scientific question," Schechter said.> "If and when politicians and other decision makers have to look at the> question of offering medically-prescribe­d heroin, we'd like them to make> that based on evidence not based on emotion.">

Schechter said heroin studies have already been conducted in Europe so

group will also open heroin clinics in Toronto and Montreal.> White House criticizes experiment>

Officials in the White House's Office of Drug Policy have dismissed the> Canadian experiment as an example of what governments should not do to

The study has the guarded backing of police officials in Vancouver, who

The researchers hope to enroll about 157 participants in Vancouver and 470> nationally.> Addicts will administer the drugs themselves under medical supervision,

The group receiving heroin will eventually be moved into the methadone> treatment, and researchers will study which treatment method addicts are> willing to stick with as well as their physical and mental health during

study.>

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