Heroin

For Medical Pain Relief

For decades, W. Gifford-Jones MD has advocated for heroin as an option for terminally-ill patients suffering from pain.

Currently, opioid addicts can access the drug at legal injection sites in Canada.  But cancer victims continue to die in agony while politicians make heroin impossible for doctors to use for patient care in hospitals to ease this needless suffering.

The arguments for the use of heroin as a pain killer in the treatment of cancer are clear.  Heroin in a more potent narcotic than morphine.  It’s also more soluble, and this means that a comparable dose of heroin can be injected using a smaller amount of fluid — an important point because it is more humane to inject less fluid into an emaciated patient (the greater the volume of liquid injected the greater the pain).  As well, heroin crosses the blood-brain barrier more quickly than morphine.  Consequently, the narcotic eases pain more rapidly.  And heroin has the great advantage of producing a euphoric feeling and relieving anxiety.  There’s nothing wrong with allowing people who only have weeks or days to live a little euphoria.