Advocacy for Methadone Treatment

Excerpt

After Drs. Nyswander and Dole initially reported their research findings with methadone treatment at the Rockefeller University in 1965 (1), its applicability on a very broad scale was quickly demonstrated. By the end of 1972, over 30 000 former heroin addicts were receiving methadone in New York City alone. Reflecting the extraordinary speed with which treatment capacity can be expanded, a single program, operated by the city's Health Services Administration, enrolled over 10 000 patients within a 2-year period (2).

Treatment outcomes were essentially the same in very large, inevitably more impersonal, programs as they had been when conducted under