A Maryland lawmaker who also works as an emergency room doctor says he wants to mitigate the state’s increasingly visible wave of heroin abuse by giving some addicts the drug for free.

Del. Dan Morhaim, a Democrat, told a room full of drug-policy reform advocates Thursday the unconventional plan would spare society from major problems associated with addiction, most notably making it so addicts would not have to commit crimes to pay for the drug.

The free heroin proposal, which Morhaim hopes to offer in legislation next year, is “better than having them commit $50-80 a day in crime,” he said during a well-attended panel discussion at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in northern Virginia.

Morhaim tells U.S. News there would be obvious hurdles to implementing the idea, including figuring out how to acquire the drug and then dispense it.

But he says people shouldn’t fear the idea, which he foresees applying only to addicts who don’t respond well to conventional treatments. The bill would “diminish their antisocial behavior,” cut off drug dealers and bring addicts into contact with treatment professionals in a sanitary environment, he says.

Addiction, Morhaim says, is “a medical issue that has disastrous social consequences” as varied as addicts stealing from their own families, burglarizing homes and committing street muggings to pay for their addictions.

There are less frequently seen costs as well, Morhaim says, including collective rises in health insurance premiums that result from addiction-related behaviors that aren’t always classified as such.

Though a far-out proposal by American standards, Morhaim’s idea actually has been tested in other Western countries, with Swiss, Spanish, Dutch, British, German and Canadian randomized controlled trials probing the efficacy of what medically is known as heroin-assisted treatment.

Several countries, including Germany and Denmark, now allow the dispensing of heroin to addicts, and a 2012 report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction reviewed the scientific evidence available and concluded there’s reason to be optimistic about the treatment.

“Over the past 15 years, six [randomized controlled trials] have been conducted ... and they provide strong evidence, both individually and collectively, in support of the efficacy of treatment with fully supervised self-administered injectable heroin, when compared with oral [methadone maintenance treatment], for long-term refractory heroin-dependent individuals,” the report says.

In Canada, a double-blind clinical trial known as SALOME is contrasting heroin-assisted treatment with use of the legal painkiller hydromorphone among 202 participants. An earlier clinical trial called NAOMI ran from 2005 to 2008, featuring 192 patients in Vancouver and 59 in Montreal, contrasting heroin-assisted therapy with the use of methadone.

“We support it as another tool in the box,” says Donald MacPherson, director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, who says the idea makes sense when people think outside the box about how a free supply of the drug can lead to less criminality and an increase in addicts' well-being.

“It’s hard to explain when you are talking about counterintuitive stuff,” he says, “[But it’s] profoundly different than getting heroin on the street [and] it’s really not that radical, it’s just that heroin has been stigmatized so badly.”

Leslie McBain, whose 25-year-old son Jordan died last year after unsuccessful treatment for an addiction to OxyContin – a legal opioid that often leads to heroin use – says she could support offering free heroin to addicts.

“Free? Sure. I hadn’t even thought about that,” she says while manning a booth for the group Moms United and Mandated to Saving the Lives of Drug Users.

“Harm reduction is whatever creates more safety for people who are addicted,” she says. “If [Jordan] had the support he needed, he would be with us today.”

It’s unclear if Maryland officials have any options to legally dispense heroin, a Schedule I substance. That category – which controversially includes marijuana – strictly limits even research opportunities, though with marijuana the federal government generally allows states to set their own policies.