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

505STATEMENT OE DR. ALBERT KURLAND, DIRECTOR, MARYLANDSTATE PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH CENTER, ACCOMPANIED BYWILLIAM McCOY, AND ROBERT TAYLORDr. KuRLAND. Yes; I would.Chairman Pepper. Without objection, it will be received.Mr. Perito. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.Dr. Kurland, I understand you have brought with you some of theparticijjants in 3'our program; is that correct?Dr. Kurland. That is correct.Mr. Perito. Would they care to sit with you during yourpresentation?Dr. Kurland. I will be glad to have them.Mr. Perito. Could 3 ou kindly introduce them for the record, as yousee fit, please.Dr. Kurland. Yes, sir. Before I introduce these clients, I wouldlike to make a brief statement in addition to wdiat you have in therecord. I might say that with the great interest that this committeehas expressed in naloxone, that this interest is well founded, that wedo have here an agent that we have seen, from the clinical standpoint,offers potential clinical promise if certain difficulties can be resolved,could im.mediately be made available to large populations of narcoticabusers. This approach, in my opmion, may be one of the most effectivemeans we have for coping with this disorder.I think if proj^erly utilized, naloxone may even surpass the use ofmethadone and furnish a much more effective means.The basis for this strong position arises from a 10-year clinicalresearch effort that began with an evaluation of narcotic addicts andnarcotic abusers admitted to a State psychiatric hospital and thereaction to the medical services provided.The experiences in this initial undertaking indicated that this was,expressing it very charitably, except for detoxification, apparently awaste of medical resources.This led to our next stej) in studying this type of patient and thiswas their evaluation in an outpatient setting. In this approach, attentionwas focused on intlividuals coming out of correctional institutionswith a history of narcotic abuse to determine their narcotic abusepatterns.This is not the kind of a research that wins anybody a Nobel Prize.It is very mundane, very unimaginative, but very basic in identifyingthe patterns of narcotic usage. In this endeavor, we were fortunateenough to obtain support from the NIMH w^ho supported the projectfor a period of 5 years. Subsequently, additional sui)i)ort was ju-ovidedby the State of Maryland and Friends of Psychiatric Research, Inc.,a nonprofit organization.Chairman Pepper. What has been the total amount of money?Dr. Kurland. The total amount of money involved was ai)proximatelyhalf a million dollars over a 5-year period.In the course of research we admitted several hundred paroleesfrom the correctional institutions of Maryland with histories of narcoticabuse. These were released to this experimental program which providedaftercare primarily in terms of abstinence and daily monitoring