METHADONE MONOPOLY

The Aug. 12 front-page article regarding the drug market near the city's
methadone programs illustrates a major flaw in the system of
methadone-maintenance treatment.

Although methadone is uniquely effective in addressing the problems of
street heroin addiction, the laws mandating that it be dispensed only at
large, centralized clinics have created new problems and greatly reduced
the benefits of the medication to patients and society.

Although the federal regulations governing methadone maintenance have been
revised, the government failed to heed the advice of experts and remove the
restrictions that prevent physicians from prescribing methadone.

If methadone were to lose its distinction as the only medication allowed to
be administered only in centralized clinics, then former addicts would no
longer be subject to such temptations, and our communities would no longer
be vulnerable to such parking-lot entrepreneurs.

Peter Vanderkloot, New York