Free Heroin to Battle Addiction

Background: Vancouver is a hub for heroin addicts due to the fact that heroin is often imported there.  The city opened a clinic in which they give out free heroin with clean needles to help the addicts live more “normal” lives.  This clinic stops heroin related crimes, such as robberies due to needing money to buy more drugs.  They also benefit through clean needles, meaning less cases of AIDS and other diseases caused by dirty needles.

How I Used it: I used as a basic overview of what my paper will be about.  This article gives a basic understanding of what is going on in this situation.  The article focuses mostly on the benefits of the heroin clinic but also some of the clear downsides.

Why Doctors are Giving Heroin to Heroin Addicts

Background: This article shows where the idea came from and why it is effective.  It demonstrates that they are using it to wean people off of heroin, since other attempts at cleanses have failed.

How I Used it: I used this article to give the background of the whole concept in general.  This article showed how it can work and that it has worked before.  It is a good article that can be used to strengthen my whole argument since it touches on many aspects of the concept of giving heroin to heroin addicts.

Vancouver study claims benefits to prescribing heroin to addicts

Background: This article gives facts about what has occurred because of this free heroin initiative.  There is also claims from critics saying that it is a bad idea.  The article provides points and counter points to the whole concept as well as a study on whether or not its working.

How I Used it: I used this article to introduce arguments against my point and disprove them.  I can also use it for an explanation about how the system all works.  I can back up my argument using a study from this article.

Drugs, Brains, and Behavior: The Science of Addiction

Background: The article holds information about addictions and how severely they can effect someone.  It speaks of addictions as a disease and how relapses work.  The science behind addictions and statistics are given in this article.  It covers medical consequences of drug addiction and mentions a broad amount of drugs.

How I Used it:  Using this article I can spoke of the science behind addiction and what it would take to get an addict off of heroin.  This helped me show how serious addiction is and how much addiction can cost medically.  I used this article to show how addicts often relapse and it is very common so this would be beneficial to the argument that treating heroin addiction with more heroin is beneficial.

Only in the Netherlands Do Addicts Complain About Free Government Heroin

Background: This article gives another example of where free heroin for addicts is being used.  It gives a background on what the whole system is like and how it works as well as the amount of people that go through the facility.  It shows graphs and numbers about the drastic decrease in addicts since the clinic began.  The article gives accounts about the clinic and life with and without the clinics from real people that have been a part of the clinic.

How I Used it: The information in this article will help strengthen my argument by giving another example of a successful free heroin clinic.  I showed the number of people using the clinic were the ones that were using when the clinic arrived in the 1990’s.  The younger generation has a smaller amount of people on dope which means that the clinic has made forward progress.

Heroin Addiction and Crime

Background: The article tells about crime related to heroin addiction.  It explains the motives behind why addicts would want to commit crime as well as the statistics of crimes that heroin addicts commit.  It tells of the correlation between violent crime and heroin addicts as well as the correlation between decision making and heroin abuse.

How I Used it:  This article will help me argue that it is beneficial to keep addicts on heroin because of the crimes they can commit because they need their fix.  I argued that it will cost less to give out free heroin with taxpayer money than it would to fix the damages and crimes committed by addicts to get their heroin.  I talked about the motivation of drug related crime and how free heroin would easily reduce crime rate.

The Only Place That They’ll Inject You With Heroin for Free

Background: This article talks about the free heroin clinic proposing what the benefits of it could be.  It states the amount of money that illegal drugs have cost the country in terms of law enforcement, drug overdoses, and health care.  It gives background on the trial of giving out free heroin “SALOME”.  It gives an account from a patient on how it has benefit him.  It shows how heroin clinics are more effective than methadone clinics and they are also cheaper.

How I Used it: This article gives me useful statistics that will help prove my thesis that free heroin will be beneficial in society. It talks about the way it has helped patients and is cheaper to run than a methadone clinic, as well as it being more effective at keeping people coming.  This article will strengthen my paper because of all the ways it shows free heroin to be beneficial.

Heroin Clinics Improve Addicts’ Lives

Background: The article has a section on all the positive effects of free heroin.  It is an example of free heroin clinic from Denmark. It explains the cost of the heroin clinic per person.  It also references a Swiss study that says that the clinic removes four percent of the most problematic addicts in the streets.

How I Used it:  I used all the positive effects to show how a free heroin clinic could benefit society.  It also tells me how it is funded and how much the funding costs which is very important to proving how it can save money by paying for heroin instead of the problems caused by addicts.

Cost Utility Analysis of co-prescribed heroin compared with methadone maintenance treatment in heroin addicts in two randomized trial

Background: This is a study that was meant to determine the cost of prescribing heroin to heroin addicts compared to addicts prescribed with just methadone.  The conclusion found that a prescription of heroin along with methadone was cost effective.  It says that patients would normally save $1133 and take part in crime ever three days to get money for their drug.

How I Used it: I used this article as evidence that a free heroin clinic can be more cost efficient for cities and states.  It has all the details of the study to use as evidence.  Using the process and multiple written conclusions and results in the study I can show why its a better idea to give out free heroin to addicts that have failed treatment before.