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

272nesses yesterday who brought out the very question you talked abouthere today, the danger of allowing private physicians to prescribemethadone at will.If it were to be distributed by a private doctor, would you considerit desirable, if not imperative, that there be a registry so that everydoctor who did prescribe methadone would have to report it to a centralforce or data bank so that any other doctor who wanted to protectthe public interest would have easy access to that information to knowwhat other doctors were prescribing, maybe in the same day for thesame patient, and also it would give an opportunity for somebodylooking at that data bank to see how much methadone, for example,was being prescribed by any one doctor, whether he was making a primarybusiness of that ; would you favor such a data bank ?Mr. HoT^Ax. I would feel that, if the private practitioner is goingto be in the business, the data bank is absolutely imperative. I thinkthat is part of our problem here.Second, I think ovce. a data bank was established, it should be monitoredby someone outside those who are in the business.Chairman Pepper. Well, the last question is: Would you think itdesirable for the Federal Government to give very serious considerationto trying to find something better and less objectionable than methadonein dealing with this matter of breaking heroin addiction ?Mr. HoRAN. Yes, I do, Mr. Chairman. INIy concern is with the questionof leaving a drug personality when you are finished with yourmethadone program.It would seem to me Federal money would be well spent in th_earea of trying to come up with a different tool, a different ]>harmacologicaltool.As a criminal prosecutor I sit there and when somebodv shows mereduced crime rates I have got to be impressed ; that means somethingto me. Maybe I am selfish. Maybe I don't like as much business asI have.1 would like to see a reduced crime rate. But I always have in mvmind—what is the price? You know, we could reduf^e the rate of rnnpby providing every rapist with a wom.an, for example, and you couldgo to your handy service clinic and get a woman and then we cut rapein half, or worse, and what is the price? I feel the snme wav aboutmethadone. What is going to be the price of having this many drugpersonalities, and that's what we have when the drug is out in socie^v.I think the Federal dollar would be well spent, coming up with adeto-^ifi^ntion nnd ab'-tinence notential in another drnier.T think the chairman mentioned before the possibility of coming upwith a drug that would make it revolting to have one narcotic.With the American pharmaceutical mind we ought to be able tocome up with something like that.Chairman Pept^er. We have discovered from onr A^arious hearingsthat about half of the crime is related to drug use, and, therefore, ifwe could cnt down drug use we would reduce crime.That is the reason the House of Pepresentatives is concei^ned aboutdrugs. So we are dealing with something directly related to crime, arewe not ? T ask you as a prosecuting attorney.Mr. HoRAN^. There is no question about that.Chairman Pepper. Thank you very much.