Narcotics research, rehabilitation, and treatment. Hearings, Ninety ...

152Mr. Blommer. You would agree there is a black market in methadone?Mr. DuPoNT. Yes.Mr. Blommer. And there will come a time—I assume you are alreadythinking of it—when you have hard-core methadone addictsthat may have become addicts from unscrupulous doctors, from theblack market, or whatever, but now we have hard-core methadoneaddicts.Dr. DuPoNT. Most of those people are using heroin, also. It willdepend on the availability. I don't think you are going to find peoplewho are shooting methadone, for example, who are not also shootingheroin. Usually they will go back and forth, and use whatever ismore available.Mr. Blommer. Would you believe it would be efficacious to takethose people in your program ?Dr. DuPoNT. Yes. They are j ust like heroin addicts.Mr. Blommer. Doctor, I know we have a disagreement on statisticsand what they mean. I do have a sheet here that I believe we gotfrom your office that shows in the last 6 months in 1970, 60 peoplethat were autopsied by the D.C. coroner had narcotics in their bodies.As I read it, 10 of the 60 died of gunshot wounds, 13 of the deadpeople had only methadone in their body, one had cocaine, and onehad Talwin. Therefore, 15 of the 50 remaining after we take awaythe gunshot deaths had no heroin in their bodies. That leaves uswith 35 heroin-related deaths. Could you, using whatever analysisor formula you want, make a judgment on how many heroin addictsthere are in the District of Columbia ^Dr. DuPoNT. I am having a little trouble following your assumptions.You are making the assumption that the methadone addict isdifferent from the heroin addict when he is pursuing addiction onthe street. In other words, methadone will compete with heroin andproduce the same effects when injected.Injected methadone produces a high like herom. It strikes me assortof a question of semantics.You could call them opiate addicts and lump them together andtalk about the frequency.. i j i -i jFor example, if it were more available, morphnie would be the drugof choice. Today heroin is the main drug in the black market, butother opiates would work just fine.,Mr. Blommer. Doctor, what I am suggesting is that it and wtienwe clear up the heroin problem that we might then be dealing witha methadone problem. . ,Dr DuPoNT. I don't call that "clear." We now have an opiateaddiction problem that is very serious, and if we switch from onedrug to the other, and have all the same consequences, we have gained''''Mr!'BL0MMER. But the point is, though, Doctor, no matter who isgiving the drugs out, there will be people who will be methadoneaddicts and people who are heroin addicts.Mv question is: Don't you feel that there is a great danger thatthe people becoming metliadone addicts will then ] ust come to vouinstead of to the street pusher that they used to go to for herom?Dr. DuPoNT. Well, come to me for what ?Mr. Blommer. For their drugs, for their methadone.