Prescription heroin approved in Canada

Thursday, September 29, 2016 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: prescription heroin, Canada, kratom

---

(NaturalNews) Just in time for the addition of the kratom plant to the federal government's list of prohibited Schedule I substances with no accepted medical use, the government of Canada is quickly ushering in its Big Pharma replacement: a pharmaceutical-grade heroin drug in the morphine family that doctors can now legally prescribe to their opiate-addicted patients for supposed recovery.

According to reports, the drug, known as diacetylmorphine, has been granted priority legal status through a federal "Special Access Program" that basically exempts it from prohibition under Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Former Health Minister Rona Ambrose removed diacetylmorphine from the Special Access Program in 2013, prior to which time it had been legal under federal guidelines, and it is now being reinstated to the program.

Only in extreme cases will doctors be allowed to prescribe the drug to patients who are already suffering from heroin addiction, even though natural alternatives like kratom can safely do the job without causing adverse effects or possibly worsening a patient's addiction. But since kratom can't be patented to generate multi-billion dollar profits – and stands to compete with pharmaceuticals that can – it had to go the way of the dodo bird.

Kratom will soon be illegal, despite a solid track record of botanical use that dates back centuries. But diacetylmorphine, which is basically just heroin in a fancy package, comes with all of the same risks of abuse, addiction and possible death.

Even so, Canada now regards diacetylmorphine as safe and beneficial:

"A number of countries have allowed doctors to use diacetylmorphine-assisted treatment to support the small percentage of patients with opioid dependence who have not responded to other treatment options," the new Canadian regulation states. "There is also a significant body of scientific evidence supporting its use."

Why kratom is a better option than prescription heroin for addicts

While the loosening of prohibition on prescription heroin might seem like a positive move for individual liberty, the legalization of diacetylmorphine, in this case, doesn't exactly fit the bill when it comes at the same time as the unjustified banning of kratom.

Kratom, in case you didn't know, is a herb native to Southeast Asia that's been safely used for thousands of years as a tonic for both energy and relaxation. It's also a powerful pain reliever that's easily consumed in the form of brewed tea. Many people use it as such to not only better the quality of their lives, but also to cut out legitimate but harmful "crutch" substances like opiates and alcohol.

There's never been a single documented case of death associated with the use of kratom, but there have been thousands of deaths attributed to the use of heroin and its various prescription forms. A number of peer-reviewed studies supporting the use of kratom as a safe alternative for opioids are available at the Natural News Science archive.

The biggest problem with heroin, prescription or otherwise, is its lethality. Overdosing on heroin is much easier than people think, even when administered as morphine, for instance, in a hospital emergency room setting. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says opioid-related deaths are on the rise, having jumped from 7.9 people per 100,000 in 2013, to 9 per 100,000 in 2014 – this includes both "street" heroin and prescribed heroin in the form of methadone (fentanyl) and diacetylmorphine.

"It's easy to overdose on heroin, because heroin is a very potent compound, and there's very little regulation over that compound," says Dr. Scott Krakower, a psychiatrist at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, New York. "So when you're taking heroin, you're not 100 percent sure what you're getting."

Sources for this article include:

IFLScience.com

CNN.com

NPR.org

Heavy.com

CDC.gov

HuffingtonPost.com

Science.NaturalNews.com