IN THE NEWS

Jim Boothroyd, a spokesperson for the North American Opiate Medication Initiative, said just 21 addicts have been signed up in the first two months of the harm-reduction project. "The study has experienced slower than expected recruitment," Boothroyd said. "The recruitment strategy was initially planned around phone lines. We thought there would be a heavy volume of calls and the people who wanted to participate would be phoning us. That didn't materialize. So we very early on changed our strategy to doing more outreach."

The outreach effort has helped bring another 40 addicts into the screening phase of the project, and researchers are confident that they will eventually get enough test subjects. "The recruitment period is six to nine months. Investigators planned to bring people in very gradually," said Boothroyd. "So while recruitment at the outset has been less than anticipated, we have a very wide window and we are very confidant we will recruit our target."

He added: "One of the working hypothesis of the study is that heroin maintenance therapy will allow them to stabilize their addictions and bring them into the realm of social services and health services which they are unable to access right now because of their chaotic lives. I think our enrollment strategy has run up against the chaos of those lives."