RESPONSE TO NIMBY REQUIRES CAUTION:

In a continuing battle to establish a methadone clinic in Princeton, West Virginia, one has to be concerned over the defensiveness of the sponsoring program's VP for Operations, who responded to criticism that methadone just substitutes one drug for another by saying, "There's a portion of the opiate population that will always be on some kind of drug. . . . The larger percentage of patients will not be." (Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Nov. 24) It would seem hard to support the claim that "the larger percentage of patients" will achieve and maintain abstinence after any kind of treatment - opiate agonist based or drug free. Statements like this tend to come back to haunt the proponents that make them.