A Dutch town has begun serving beer to homeless alcoholics. Under medical supervision, they are allowed to buy up to ten half-litre bottles per day, each costing 40 cents, to try and get their lives back.

A drug rehabilitation centre in Amersfoort, de Kleine Haag, offers the beer not only to watch the alcoholics but, above all, to regulate their intake. The patients are so addicted that normally, when they don't attend the centre, they will have finished off a bottle of hard liquor by noon.

Psychiatrist
  With a special card, they can buy half a litre of beer per hour, up to ten pints a day. The counter opens at 7.30am and closes at 9.30pm. No hard liquor is sold. Six months after the trial began in Amersfoort, seven of the 25 addicts involved in the programme have moved on to assisted living.

Controversial
It is the first time this controversial method is being tried in the Netherlands. It may even be the first such trial in Europe. The approach was developed in Canada after four homeless people froze to death in 1996.
Opponents interviewed by a Dutch television programma are highly critical of the method. Those running the programme are rather positive. They point out that the people they are helping are the worst addicts, those everyone else has given up on. Thanks to the programme, they are no longer homeless, eat properly, shower daily and receive medical attention.

Cuts in rehab budgets
Evaluations of the programme are being made against the backdrop of looming budget cuts in health care. But cutting aid to rehab centres is the last thing the incoming government should do, warns Don Schothorst, the founder of Solutions, the first Dutch private clinic for drug addicts.

The facts, he argues, are quite straightforward. “Economic crises only boost addictions, whatever it is people are addicted to. People lose their jobs or earn less. When they sit on the couch and worry about their mortgage or their children, milk is the last thing they'll crave.”