Next week, Canadian doctors will be allowed to prescribe heroin to addicts. Health Canada has authorized 120 people to get the prescription, including 26 who had participated in a previous trial and had not responded to conventional medical treatments. It will be the first instance of medical personnel in North America being allowed to prescribe the drug.
 

According to the U.K.'s Independent, physicians who participated in the trial wanted permission to prescribe heroin to their patients, but regulations passed in 2013 prohibited the prescribing of heroin outside of clinical trials.
 

Doctors successfully petitioned the supreme court of British Columbia to grant an injunction against the ban. "The patients are so desperate for treatment, so desperate to be able to no longer be addicted," David Byres, vice-president of Acute Clinical Programs at Providence Health Care, told the Globe and Mail. "It’s a great thing to be able to help them, and help with the addiction that has taken over their entire lives."
 

Patients who are prescribed the drug must go to the clinic at least three times a day so they can be checked for harmful effects.  
 

Prescription heroin is already legal in the United Kingdom, and in several other European countries including Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
 

To read the entire Independent article, go here.