METHADONE CLINICS

Methadone clinics

Methadone clinics

Methadone? a long-acting synthetic narcotic analgesic? was first used in the maintenance treatment of drug addiction in the mid-1960s by Drs. Vincent Dole and Marie Nyswander of Rockefeller University. There are now 115?000 (Collins? 1983) methadone maintenance patients in the United States? 40?000 of whom are in New York State and about half that many are in California. Methadone is widely employed throughout the world? and is the most effective known treatment for heroin addiction.

The goal of methadone clinics is to reduce illegal heroin use and the crime? death? and disease associated with heroin addiction. The purpose of methodone clinics is to detoxify heroin addicts? but most heroin addicts who detox—using methadone or any other method—return to heroin use. (Retreived from www.rnao.com)

Therefore? the goal of methodone clinics is to reduce and even eliminate heroin use among addicts by stabilizing them on methadone for as long as is necessary to help them avoid returning to previous patterns of drug use. (Cushman? 1977) The benefits of methodone clinics have been established by hundreds of scientific studies? and there are almost no negative health consequences of long-term methadone treatment? even when it continues for twenty or thirty years. The success of methadone in reducing crime? death? disease? and drug use is well documented.

Methadone is the most effective treatment for heroin addiction. Compared to the other major drug treatment modalities—drug-free outpatient treatment? therapeutic communities? and chemical dependency treatment—methadone is the most rigorously studied and has yielded the best results.

Methadone is effective HIV/AIDS prevention. methodone clinics reduces the frequency of injecting and of needle sharing. Methadone treatment is also an important point of contact with service providers and supplies an opportunity to teach drug users harm reduction techniques such as how to prevent HIV/AIDS? hepatitis? and other health problems that endanger drug users. (Dole and Joseph? 1978)

Methadone treatment reduces criminal behavior. Drug-offense arrests decline because methodone clinics patients reduce or stop buying and using illegal drugs. Arrests for predatory crimes decline because methodone clinics patients no longer need to finance a costly heroin addiction? and because treatment allows many patients to stabilize their lives and obtain legitimate employment.

Methadone drastically reduces? and often eliminates? heroin use among addicts. The Treatment Outcome Prospective Study (TOPS)—the largest contemporary controlled study of drug treatment—found that patients drastically reduced their heroin use while in treatment? with less than 10% using heroin weekly or daily after just three ...