METHADONE IS STILL THE BEST TREATMENT

To the Editor:

Re "Giuliani Orders 5 City Hospitals to Wean Addicts Off Methadone" (front
page, Aug. 15): I do not know where Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's experts get
their information, but there is abundant evidence showing that the majority
of addicts withdrawn from methadone revert to street use of intravenous
heroin.

The Mayor is wrong in arguing that methadone substitutes one dependency for
another. Patients do not get a "high" from methadone. They quickly develop
tolerance to the oral drug. The analogy to insulin is a far more apt one.

Mayor Giuliani is in the process of destroying the only drug abuse
treatment program widely acknowledged by medical and drug abuse experts to
work.

ERIC J. SIMON
New York, Aug. 15, 1998

The writer is a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at New York
University Medical Center.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski