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only about 3,000 a year, with an average relapse rate of 70% or more, against a total addiction which is unquantified but certainly enormous.
28.
Moreover the best available estimates (which may not be altogether accurate) suggest that with the treatment methods hitherto used expenditure per addict successfully treated has probably varied in recent years between $8,500 and $17,000. Details are given in the Annex to this paper. A real assault on the problem depends therefore on the development of treatment suitable for application en masse at a reasonable cost. The present methadone maintenance pilot schemes look like pointing the way to this. If they do, the treatment will have to be applied en masse: the new research unit in the Medical Department, recommended in the third paper in this series, will otherwise have to find an alternative.
29.
The aim must be to provide as soon as possible facilities sufficient to handle all addicts suitably. The law can then be changed to provide that all persons proved to be addicts shall be sentenced to undergo a course of treatment, either in custody or under some form of probation order. This however implies a con- tinuing need for a range of different methods of treat- ment: what suits one addict may not suit another, whilst many are unable to rid themselves completely of addiction in one big stride. It also implies that the cost-effectiveness of present programmes and the future roles of SARDA and DPAS should be reviewed, to ensure that resources are used to the best possible advantage.
30.
It will be one of the major and priority tasks of the reconstituted ACAN to review overall what is being done now to treat drug addicts, and arising from this review to advise Government of the measures it considers necessary to provide facilities for all addicts to be brought within treatment programmes and within a
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CONFIDENTIAL #2
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