I want to thank all the witnesses today for some really important testimony.
Dr. Vogel, I would like to start with you. I would guess that you're familiar with the 2008 NAOMI trial, which attempted to assess who would be the best candidates for heroin-assisted treatment in the Canadian context. Briefly, that study quoted that “long-term, chronic opioid injectors with severe health and social problems, and several previous addiction treatment attempts” would be among those candidates. It also pointed out that the participants are largely “polydrug users with cocaine being the second most popular drug of choice, after heroin.”
That was in 2008, so times have changed, but I would venture that this remains, as I think you suggested, an underused treatment in Canada. It's a struggle to get funding and general support for this treatment as well as local production, as in the case of Fair Price Pharma in the Downtown Eastside.
Does this patient description match who is accessing treatment in Switzerland? What do you think we are missing in our approach, apart from perhaps a massive scale-up in this treatment?