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Twenty years later, more drugs, more need for methadone treatment On Jan. 24,1988, a NY Times headline read: “Twin Evils Spur Methadone Clinics” in Connecticut. On July 6, 2008, Vindy.com (Youngstown) headlined, “Opiate addiction grows; methadone clinics expand.” A compounding problem referred to in 1988 was HIV/AIDS; in 2008, it was oxycodone. Both articles refer to cheaper, purer and more plentiful heroin (the 2008 story says it’s “cheaper to buy heroin than to buy a pack of cigarettes”). In 1988 it was noted that heroin was no longer a big-city problem: “…it’s in our suburbs. It’s available anywhere.” Twenty years later, in the Ohio-Pennsylvania border region, methadone clinics are said to be “dotting suburbia.”