BOOMING HEROIN TRADE NOT JUST A BOON FOR AFGHANISTAN

The heroin trade, despite (in part because!) the tens of billions of US taxpayer dollars spent to try to stop it, is clearly not just a boon for Afghanistan. The NY Times, Jan 29. 2006, reports that in Myanmar, too, the "heroin trade is burgeoning."

And everything indicates lots of other producing and trans-shipment countries ain't doing bad either, in Asia, Europe, South America. But do america and its allies in this war on drugs contemplate any change in strategy? Apparently not. An old adage: insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results.

Legislation that FACILIATES methadone treatment - a nice change!

By unanimous vote (93-0) the Indiana House of Representatives approved a bill that would facilitate establishment of methadone treatment clinics in Porter County. Previously the law made such programs impossible in most regions of the state. The bill now goes to the State Senate. The House action was reported by a story that ran on nwitimes.com on Friday, January 20, 2006 the bill can be read in its entirety at http://www.in.gov/legislative/bills/2006/HB/HB1023.1.html.

720 Million Bucks Buys a Methadone Clinic Network

(Charleston Gazette - W. Va., 12/31)
Deal includes 8 of the 9 W. Va. clinics, which went for a cool $36 million. Methadone treatment is big business, like health care in general in US. The difficulty here is that patients needing methadone have no publicly funded option in most localities. Monopolies are always likely to abuse or misuse their power, but when the "product" they purvey is a life-and-death medical treatment it's nothing short of tragic. (NOTE: the article describes the facilities as "clinics [that] sell methadone.)