NEW YORK'S GIULIANI WANTS ADDICTS TO GET OFF METHADONE

NEW YORK - Despite dire warnings from experts on drug abuse, New York
is about to begin a strong push to get its addicts off methadone,
something no other major U.S. city has attempted.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who has governed the nation's biggest city
like a stern Victorian father, applying the rod to jaywalkers,
horn-honkers and squeegee men who insist on cleaning windshields for
spare change, argues that methadone users have traded one addiction
for another.

"I think methadone is an enslaver," he said recently. "If you're going
to keep somebody permanently enslaved to methadone for the rest of
their lives, then I have real questions about your common sense."

New York City has by far the largest number of methodone patients in
the nation.

Under the City Hall plan, the 2,000 or so methadone patients at
city-run hospitals will be pushed to wean themselves from the liquid
heroin substitute within a few months. Giuliani also has urged the
approximately 30,000 patients getting methadone in private clinics in
New York to go clean.

The weaning approach will include counseling and job training.
Giuliani has called it "a more difficult but much more loving and
caring attempt to try to integrate into a person the ability to take
care of their own life."

The plan has shocked many public-health experts, who mostly praise
methadone as a way to help heroin users break their addiction without
going cold turkey.

"Close down methadone programs, and (addicts) will be back on the
streets, back on drugs, and back on welfare," Gen. Barry McCaffrey,
the nation's drug czar, said in a statement, calling Giuliani's plan
"at odds with the conclusions of the nation's scientific and medical
community."

He said: "The problem isn't that there are too many methadone
programs, it is that there are too few."

"This has not been tried in any major city. There's a reason for it.
They know the outcome," said Mark Parrino, president of the American
Methadone Treatment Organization, which represents 650 methadone programs.

"The first thing that will happen is that 80 percent of these people
will relapse," Parrino said. He called the plan "an incredibly risky
and dangerous experiment."

Methadone, popularized some 30 years ago, is a narcotic that blunts
heroin addicts' craving for the street drug and eases the painful
symptoms of heroin withdrawal.

An estimated 115,000 former heroin addicts are enrolled in methadone
programs nationwide. Distribution programs are strictly regulated by
federal and state authorities.

Alice Perciballi, a 44-year-old former heroin addict, said the
treatment has helped her stay clean and in control for about five
years. She works and is studying for her high-school equivalency degree.

"They think the jails are full now? Do you know what it would be like
without methadone?" Perciballi asked.

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady