Pubdate: Mon, 14 Mar 2016
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2016 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Susan G. Gevertz
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v16/n134/a06.html

WHAT TO DO ABOUT HEROIN ADDICTION

To the Editor:

The recent increase in heroin use in Boston and throughout the 
country should come as no surprise to anyone. Following an increase 
in the prescribing of opioid painkillers, a number of steps were 
taken to reduce such prescribing markedly, but with no attention 
whatever paid to the patients who had become dependent, not even 
offers of detoxification.

Many, predictably, turned to the much cheaper and widely available 
alternative of heroin.

The only tangential reference to treatment in your article is the 
statement that a particular stretch of Massachusetts Avenue is known 
as Methadone Mile. Would that it were so! Along with all other forms 
of treatment, methadone maintenance - the gold standard of care - 
should be readily available to all who want and need help for their 
dependence, and who with tragic frequency die without it.

SUSAN G. GEVERTZ

Scarsdale, N.Y.

The writer is a health care consultant.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom