This past fall, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani launched a misguided plan to get methadone patients at city-run hospitals off the drug, saying that methadone treatment merely swaps one drug addiction - to heroin - for another. His attack on methadone patients comes within a year of the landmark National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference in which an expert panel affirmed the positive outcomes of this approach to treatment and recommended it's expansion. Barry MCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Policy, swiftly and correctly countered the mayor with a strong statement in far-reaching support of methadone maintenacne treatment. [continues 436 words]
WASHINGTON---The war on drugs is costly, politically divisive and, after three decades, seen by many as a failure. Congress struggles for solutions amid steaming rhetoric. On the front line are frustrated physicians and police searching for new answers. A U.S.-wide survey of police chiefs by the Police Foundation found that 85 percent want major changes in drug policy. Sixty percent said law enforcement has not reduced the problem. Because of mandatory sentencing laws, drug offenders represent more than 60 percent of federal prisoners. Police see firsthand that nonviolent drug users and addicts, who are the victirns of drug dealers, are the most negatively affected by "warehousing" in prison. [continues 508 words]
