RUDY: METHADONE DOCS HOOKED ON CASH

Mayor Giuliani stepped up his campaign to end methadone treatment for
heroin addicts yesterday - claiming clinic operators who oppose him are
just guarding their $44-million-a-year turf.

"New York has one-third of the methadone-maintenance slots in the entire
United States of America, and this is a $44 million business, rising to
over $50 million," Giuliani said.

"The people describing me as crazy are the people who run that business

There's a whole cottage industry, the methadone industry, and I'm really
amused by their response to it."

On Monday, some drug-addiction experts slammed Giuliani for saying the city
should end methadone-treatment programs for about 37,000 ex-junkies who
take the drug daily.

Despite the rhetoric, the mayor doesn't have the power to ax the federally
and state-funded programs.

But instead of backing off, the mayor claimed the attacks on him were
motivated by greed.

"I wonder about a doctor running a methadone-maintenance program who, when
a mayor raises the idea that we should end methadone - which is a way of
keeping people independent - describes my idea as crazy.

"Wouldn't you want your child, whom you cared about and loved, in a program
in which they were dealing with the deeper problems that are causing their
addiction
the way Daytop ^Village_, Phoenix House and a number of the
intense and much more difficult programs are?"

Those programs require participants to quit all drug use.

Experts reached yesterday said Giuliani didn't understand the problem.

"It is true that of the people who utilized heroin who go on methadone, 90
percent will never give it up," said Dr. Ronald Dougherty, who heads the
New York State Medical Society's Committee on Drug Abuse.

"But I've had doctors on methadone. I had an airline pilot on methadone,"
said Dougherty, who runs the Tullyhill Treatment Program near Syracuse.

"I believe in therapeutic communities, but there's no way they could take
care of the 250,000 heroin addicts in New York City.

"If you took everybody off methadone, there'd be 250,000 addicts in the
five boroughs who are going to be getting money for methadone any way they
can."

Other experts noted that programs like Daytop and Phoenix House also have
high failure rates.

Daytop officials did not return a call.

Phoenix House spokesman Chris Policano said the failure rate is high among
people who quit the program early on, but "75 percent of those who remain
more than a year stay drug-free, employed and out of trouble."

He also said Phoenix House believes many methods, including methadone, are
needed to treat drug addicts.

"Methadone maintenance offers a valid approach for many heroin addicts," he
said.

Dr. Edwin Salsitz, director of the methadone program at Beth Israel Medical
Center, said Giuliani doesn't have all the facts.

"He probably has one ^a methadone user_ in his own administration, but they
will never admit it, because they'll probably lose their jobs," Salsitz
said.

A city firefighter, a lawyer and successful business people are among the
participants in Beth Israel's methadone program, he said.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)