The Scotsman reports, A key government drugs policy has been exposed as a shocking failure after it emerged that giving methadone to heroin addicts has a 97% failure rate
Here they are assessing the success of the programme in respect of getting people off, which isn't the major objective.
In NZ the methadone programme was established in 1977 to, "reduce the destructive side effects of opioid use - such as crime and spread of infectious disease - rather than get addicts off drugs all together."
So does the Scottish research, comparing those who went cold turkey through rehab with the methadone patients, look at this aspect. You bet;
The biggest difference, however, was on crime. Only 13% of those who were drug-free admitted to committing any crime. The figure for those who were on drugs was a staggering 91%.
But let's not forget this is Scotland.
A decent appraisal of the NZ scheme would be more than useful. Anything I can find usually says something like "the literature shows benefits" meaning overseas literature. Not all.
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I would think there are several benefits to methadone usage. One is that it would reduce the cost to the addict reducing their criminal inclinations. This would reduce costs to taxpayers via lower theft levels and less policing. Second, the users would not share needles reducing the spread of AIDS and other diseases lowering health care costs. Third, the user is no longer buying from criminal elements and not financially supporting gangs as in the past (again that ought to have knock on benefits for the public). Fourth, it reduces the likelihood that the user would end up in prison by moving him from a "criminal" activity to a legal one thus again saving taxpayers money.
I would think that compared to criminalizing their activity this a step in the right direction.
Yeah, we should always rely on the rumor mill to determine wether a cause is worthy or NOT--I mean your brothers girlfriends sisters mother might have told you a story about a methadone patient that did "such and such"--but thank GOD the world doesn't (or shouldn't) rely on such stories to determuine the worthiness of medical endeavors.
Lets look at this statistically....so less people in "abstinance based" treatment committ less crimes. OK--well only about 5% of opiate addicts make it to a YEAR in abstinance based programs. That means 95% of all opiate addicts entering this type of treatment RELAPSE to ILLICIT drug use. And we all know the statistics on CRIME and ACTIVE ADDICTS. Suddenly that original statistic doesn't mean so much.
Hi Kristan, I have always supported the methadone programme.
But the Scottish report says, "McKeganey's report was based on interviews with 695 drug users who began treatment for their addiction in 2001. The majority were given methadone-based care, while a small percentage were placed in residential rehabilitation.
The authors then interviewed them 33 months afterwards to find out whether, over a 90-day period, they had come off drugs.
For those on the most common form of treatment - methadone maintenance - only 3.4% were clear. For those who had been in residential rehabilitation or gone 'cold turkey', often for up to nine months and without any methadone, the figure was 29.4%"
This is different from your data which says only 5 percent of people who go the abstinance pathway succeed, unless I am misunderstanding you.
There is always so much negative stuff said about the methadone program and those who take methadone. I am on just such a program and can tell you that the methadone program has save this country a lot of grief I know many that have changed there lives for the better not all users of the program want to sell spit swap there methadone some of us just want to get on with our lives.
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