 Heroin addiction has a high relapse rate. Most people cannot quit or have no desire to quit for quite some time. Some people may undergo abstinence-based treatment programs several times without obtaining permanent success. Scientific research has proven that these people can benefit from the prescription of opiate medications like methadone or buprenorphine. However, despite opiate replacement therapy, some addicts continue using street heroin and engaging in criminal activity to get their daily dose. For these people, a prescription of diacetylmorphine, otherwise known as heroin, has proven to be successful in improving their social and health situation, reducing the risk of lethal overdose, HIV and hepatitis infection, crime, homelessness, and unemployment, which benefits society as a whole. Recently, several countries are providing heroin maintenance program, like Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and Great Britain. The quality of life of these heroin users improved so much that many of them choose to undergo abstinence-based treatment after a time. In February 2008, the Danish parliament decided to start a heroin prescription program. The HCLU's video advocacy team went to investigate. We estimate that we have about 20,000 heroin users in Denmark, most of them living in Copenhagen, but they are spread all over the country. It seems that even though we have a very liberal treatment policy in Denmark, there is still a minor group of drug addicts that would benefit from an offer with the heroin prescription. In Switzerland, you have seen there has been no surplus recruitment of drug abusers because of heroin treatment. The users benefit of it in that way. They don't have to live in this area making a lot of criminality. They can go out there, they can have the drugs, and they can try to live a more normal life than they are living today. And of course, for the citizens and for the police, we hope that it will decrease the level of criminality in addition to drug users. We have had the discussion about starting a heroin prescription program or having a heroin trial in Denmark for 15 years. It just seemed endless. It's been a very tough debate and sometimes the debate was just, you know, going just out of the roof. At one point, some other parliamentarians in government or in one of the parties that supported government actually said that I was in, that I as a social democrat was working together with the mafia and the criminals because I was speaking about prescription of heroin to drug users as a part of a treatment. Last year, a conservative newspaper printed this story about Linda. Linda is 30 years old and she's been using heroin for more than a decade. She was selling sex so she could buy her heroin. Sometimes it got too hot for her and she got enrolled in methadone programs here. But that was not good enough for her. She needed heroin, but usually she starts using benzos and she says that methadone plus benzos is a bit like heroin for her. And then she's back out there because she can't get a benzo prescription and she's selling sex again. And then she had found this client who is a 71-year-old guy. He pays her in benzos. He gets the prescription from the doctor and he pays her in benzos for her sexual services. But he says himself, I'm a necrophilia and I need you to take a handful of these tablets before we are having sex. And when she's almost unconscious, he's having sex with her. And that story was a real shock. It was not as much about Linda or we can make room for her or she got included in our society. It was more like this huge monster turning up behind her and pushes her into the circle. And this is the triggering factor in Denmark and the reason why we will start heroin prescription next year. Evidence doesn't do it. They put down a working group who should study the results from Switzerland and Germany and the Netherlands and go through their experiments and see if there was a positive effect of this treatment efforts. And the conclusion was positive and then it was decided to make heroin treatment for the Danish drug abusers at least in some municipalities and not as a trial but as a treatment offer to those who need it. All heroin has to be given supervised. That's to say that nothing will be on take home doses. Everything has to be taken on the spot. They have to travel once or twice daily to this clinic and then it will be given in conjunction with methadone on a take home basis. And then you have to report the next day in the clinic and have your next dose or the next two doses in the clinic. And one of the reasons why we are now trying it out in Denmark and making it as part of treatment is because more and more people, just normal citizens actually said why don't you do this?