Addiction treatment delays are deplorable

THERE seems to be a disconnect between your headline ‘Tracking system to monitor recovering drug users’ and the body of the story that documents the woeful inadequacy of treatment capacity in Ireland (July 10).

It is simply irrational to force those wanting to give up their illicit opiate habits to wait two years or more for treatment proven in Ireland and around the world to be enormously effective. Countries as divergent as Germany, Hong Kong, the US and, most recently, Iran and China have been able to achieve massive expansion of services almost from one year to the next.

The only prerequisite has been commitment.

It reflects a perverted sense of priorities when government agencies and committees debate strategies for increasing the “monitoring” of patients who, as you report, may have been in treatment 10 years or more, while continuing to ignore those who are being abandoned by shortsighted policies and practices that tolerate — indeed, ensure — multi-year waiting lists. Not only drug-users but the nation as a whole deserve better.

Robert Newman MD, MPH

Director

Baron Edmond de Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute

Beth Israel Medical Center

New York