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

625New York and other places that the number of vohmtary addicts whocome forward for addiction have more than flooded, exhausted the resou.rcesof the treatment centers.Chairman Pepper. I suppose that sort of legislation would almosthave to be at the State level. It probably would not be in the properscope of the Federal Government, except maybe with respect to armedservices.Governor Carteij. We now have only three methadone centers inGeorgia, all three of which are in i^tlanta. I understand there are morethan twice as many addicts who come forward and say help me as canbe handled under the present system because of lack of funds and lackof personnel.Chairman Pepper. Governor Shapp ?Governor Shapp. We have no such law on the books now. We have abill before our legislature to set up this whole program for drug controland rehabilitation and this is a feature of our new legislation.However, we have a couple of problems, even if this legislation passes.First, we have no hospitals in the State and no facilities in theState where we can start this type of treatment and we will have tostart from scratch in developing this.Second, there is no Avay at this moment that we know to determinethe attitude of the addicts themselves toward this treatment and if youset up a program to treat somebody and try to rehabilitate hem andyou do not knovr whether they are going to accept the treatment thisway. yoii may not have an effective program at all. So we are startingto get our feet wet in this program and I think we have a lot to learn.We need all the help we can get. We are going to move in the directionof taking care of these addicts and trying to force rehalnlitation. Butjust how far it will go and liow successful this program will be, wecannot tell at this time.Lieutenant Governor Brickley. We do have an old statute in INIichiganAvhich provides for involuntary commitment through probatecourt of a pei'son addicted. It has been rai-ely used for that purpose.It requires a confinement at a State hos]:»ital. I suspect it has beenrarely used because we do not have the facilities there. You usually douot have a petitioning party and we are so busy with those we canconfine through the ciiminal i)rocess, either through the Federal NarcoticAddict Rehabilitation Act or through an alternative to sentencing,which is usually sufficient. It has hardly ever been used for thatpurpose, but it is there.Chairman Pepper. While vou are speaking. Lieutenant Govcn-norBrickley, would you tell us whether or not the Detroit police departmenthas said that they had found by the use of methadone a reductionin the incidence of crime ?Lieutenant Governor Brickley. I was just going to volunteer that.I am sorry I did not say it in my opening statement. The methadonetreatment program really started in the last 6 months in Detroit andin May, for the fii'st time in my memory, they have had a reductionin the incidence of crime, particularly those crimes, rape, robbery,burglary, and larceny fi'om the person. I think there are some conclusionsyou can draw from that.Governor Carter. One more item that I think might be of interestto this committee : About 3 months ago, I met at night for supper with