|
McCaffrey
and
Methadone
10/3/97
In a speech before a crowd of 600 attendees of a national conference
on heroin and addiction in Washington, DC, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey came
out for the first time in favor of increased access to methadone treatment.
"It seems to me -- and we've been pushing on it for about six months
-- we have got to get serious about methadone maintenance programs and
LAM or we cannot even hope to deal with this problem" said McCaffrey.
He followed that up with what can only be regarded as a very hopeful statement
for those who have fought long and hard for methadone access:
"[I]f we do this thing correctly, if we allow the dose rates to
be prescribed by doctors and not by policy, if we allow it to be decentralized
so that physicians who are trained and monitored are allowed to dispense
the drug instead of necessarily having it only in some centralized locations,
if we allow SAMSHA to be a dominant policy-making voice in this process
as opposed to leaving it all on the FDA, if we fund it correctly, if we
ensure that DEA appropriate concerns are taken into account, we're going
to make a big difference."
David Purchase, director of the North American Syringe Exchange Network,
and one of the founding fathers of harm reduction in the U.S., told The
Week Online, "It's great to see Barry McCaffrey moving away from the
influence of the Flat Earth Society and into the real world. Let's just
hope that he continues on his journey."
Issue #11 of The Week Online featured the National Alliance of Methadone
Advocates (NAMA) as our link of the week (http://www.drcnet.org/rapid/1997/9-12-1.html#link).
Visit NAMA's web site at http://www.methadone.org,
and be sure to visit NAMA's affiliates via their links page. Methadone
info is also available at DRCNet's Methadone Topics in Depth section at
http://www.drcnet.org/methadone.
-- END --
|
Issue #14, 10/3/97
Web Magazine Rates Drug Library a Perfect Five | DPF Conference This Month: The 11th International Conference on Drug Policy taking place in New Orleans | Swiss Vote Overwhelmingly Against Zero-Tolerance | House Judiciary Committee holds hearings on medical marijuana | Needle Exchange Funding: Grant info for large, small and start-up needle exchange programs | Substance Abuse Research Grants: Call for proposals from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation | McCaffrey and Methadone | British Newspaper Launches Campaign to Legalize Cannabis | Rash of Overdoses in Australia | Colombian President Defends His Drug War Record | Link of the Week: Monitoring the Colombia situation | Quote of the Week: An about face by ex-general McCaffrey on the public's ability to decide the medical marijuana issue | Editorial: The Swiss opt out of another war
|
This issue -- main page
This issue -- single-file printer version
Drug War Chronicle -- main page
Chronicle archives
|
PERMISSION to reprint or
redistribute any or all of the contents of Drug War Chronicle (formerly The Week Online with DRCNet is hereby
granted. We ask that any use of these materials include proper credit and,
where appropriate, a link to one or more of our web sites. If your
publication customarily pays for publication, DRCNet requests checks
payable to the organization. If your publication does not pay for
materials, you are free to use the materials gratis. In all cases, we
request notification for our records, including physical copies where
material has appeared in print. Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network,
P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202)
293-8344 (fax), e-mail [email protected]. Thank
you.
Articles of a purely
educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet
Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
|
