In order to get crack users into the healthcare system, it is important to provide the drugs on prescription, according to both Lahey and Cornelissen. The latter points to the 1980s and 1990s when heroin caused many problems in the city. The problem was partly suppressed by providing free heroin. “That is a super successful story. We have been doing that since the 1990s, which means that the number of heroin users is really phasing out, research also shows.”
Medical crack
MDHG already advocated the provision of medical crack 20 years ago, but ran from one door to the other. But now the interest group has finally received the green light from the municipality to investigate, together with the GGD, whether crack can be legally distributed in designated places.
Lahey: “We notice that there is a good wind blowing in Amsterdam, and that the municipality also sees that something else needs to be done than just chasing and trying to get all the drugs out of the world. We have just started a preliminary investigation: what are the needs of users, under what conditions would they want to participate, and what should it look like? Once we get an idea of this, we go to social services, addiction doctors and the like to ask what objections they see. So it is really still a preliminary investigation to see what is possible.”