Canada's taxes increase, its hospitals become worse and worse, yet this is possible:

A clinic providing free heroin to Vancouver addicts is to open later this month to see if prescribing the drug can help addicts who have failed in other treatment programs.

Similar projects have been scorned in the United States, seen as unethical or dangerous. There have been such studies in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and Spain.

The 12-15 month trial is to determine if prescribed, pharmaceutical-grade heroin - in conjunction with methadone treatment - is more effective than methadone alone in treating certain opiate-addicted people.

"We're trying to figure out whether we can reach out to those people with medically prescribed heroin," said Dr. Martin Schechter, principal investigator for The North American Opiate Medication Initiative.

The project also will be conducted in Toronto and Montreal, but is set to get under way in Vancouver first, following government approval - expected in about two weeks.

More than 4,000 drug addicts live near the clinic in Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside, an area known for its street drug deals.

Heroin is cheap in Vancouver - and almost always has been - because it comes across the Pacific by the boatload. In 1997 I attended a funeral in Niagara Falls for a young woman (friend of a friend) who had overdosed in her filthy one-room Vancouver apartment. As far as I was concerned, this woman had made a decision to try heroin, and wound up an addict. Sometimes people make bad choices, and it's always nice if there's someone out there who can help repair the damage. For years the government has been trying to clean up addicts, and I don't know what the success rate is, but they must be pretty desperate if they are now pushing the drugs.

The project has scientific approval - and $6.4 million - from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, a government agency, and the support of the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto and the Universite de Montreal.

I would much rather see that $6.4 million go towards cancer research, or toward upgrading and modernizing our hospitals. I simply do not feel that we as individuals should be paying taxes to buy heroin for addicts. Prescription grade junk isn't cheap. Due to an unfortunate resistance to conventional painkillers, my mother took that stuff. It was normal to be vistied by the RCMP for spot checks, and it was to them we had to return her unused prescription portions when she went back inot the hospital. So as you can see, the administration involved in such drugs is costly in itself.

At what point are we allowed to say no? I think it would be great if we could clean up the addicts, but how many of them have such deep-rooted problems and addictions that they won't be able to stay clean? Should we then continue to support them with government class smack at a premium price because it is cleaner than street drugs?

The U.S. government would not back a similar program, said David Murray of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington, D.C. He said addiction should be treated as a disease to be cured.

My uncle's stepson was on and off the horse for about nine years. He has one year of sobriety under his belt, paid for by his wealthy mother. His treatment came in the form of private clinics in the U.S. Not everyone can afford that, I know, but I just don't see why it should be up to the taxpayer to pay for the drugs. Paying to fund treatment is one thing, but we shouldn't be in the business of pushing.