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

162heroin addiction and support all kinds of destructive behavior. Methadonedoes nothing about those problems.Mr. Rangel. Thank you.Chairman Pepper. Mr. Keating.Mr. Keating. Doctor, did I understand you earlier to indicate thatthere were 26 deaths attributed to the methadone, or did I hear youincorrectly ?Dr. DuPoNT. Twenty-three that involved methadone. Not all youcould say could be attributed to methadone, because many of themalso had heroin as well. There were a total of 14 of the 23 that did notinvolve heroin also.Mr. Keating. Breaking that down, did you indicate that five wereassociated in some way or another with your group ?Dr. DuPoNT. Five out of the 23 and three out of the 14.Mr. Keating. How were you able to determine if these were associatedwith a drug dispensed by your organization ?Dr. DuPont. Well, two of them were patients who were in our program2 days, one of whom took heroin and alcohol along with themethadone and died of a multiple overdose.The second was a young woman who was in the second day of theprogram and felt sick in the evening after taking her dose at 8 o'clock.She went to bed, vomited in her sleep, inhaled the vomit into herlungs, and died. Those were the only two patients to die of overdoses.A third death was a person who was put into a cab and who wasabout to die of an overdose. The cab raced to the hospital but thedriver noticed that the person who put him in the cab threw somethinginto the street that was not identifiable. The policeman was toldabout this. When he came back and looked in the street he found abottle with an NTA label. But we count that as a death that may havehad something to do with our methadone. Two other cases occurredwhen people not in the treatment program were given bottles of NTAmethadone and died of overdoses. Both included heroin as well asmethadone ; that is, they participated in an addict drug-taking experiencewhich involved methadone.That is the total : Five.Mr. Keating. Have you had any deaths that were attributed topeople who took the methadone from the clinic to take at home or asa result of that procedure ? You know, you have some people that onlycome in twice a week.Dr. DuPoNT. No patient who has been on the program longer than2 days has died from an overdose of anything.Mr. Keating. I think that helps clear up a number of questions Ihad. How do you ascertain the previous experience of the patient interms of heroin or methadone or some other drug?Dr. DuPoNT. We ask them and record the information about whenthey say they first begun to use each of the numerous illegal drugs,including methadone and heroin.We also take a urine test at the beginning of the treatment. It remainspossible for a person who is not an opiate addict to get into ourprogram and to continue to participate in the program without everhaving been an opiate addict.For example, if a person would drink a bottle of tonic water, suchas gin and tonic, it would produce quinine in the urine, which is a com-