Nazi supply of opiates from the Middle-east was cut off by the Allies. It came into use as a treatment for addiction in the U.S. in the late 1940s, apparently proving the theory that Americans will go for anything as long as they can call it something else.  Although methadone was originally thought of as a cure for addiction, it didn’t actually cure anything. It just substituted one addiction for another, and methadone turned out to be harder to kick. But the new synthetic opiate had certain advantages—mostly for the administrators— because it was long-lasting, it could be given once a day, it could be taken orally, and it was easier to gage the dose needed to stabilize an addict. Unfortunately, Congress became directly involved in micro-managing methadone treatment and its potential as a maintenance drug was thwarted.  It came to be used primarily as an agent for detoxing addicts, with or without their compliance, “in a period not to exceed 21 days.”^[9]

Since the U.S. specialists had dealt with tens of thousands of addicts and their British counterparts had never seen more than a few hundred, they naturally deferred to the American expertise, and the methadone withdrawal approach came to be generally accepted throughout the new English clinic system.

“It was a sledgehammer to crack a very tiny nut,” said Bing Spear, former head of the Home Office Drugs Branch.  As Chief Inspector of Britain’s principal drug enforcement agency, Spear had a lofty vantage point for viewing the turmoil of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and he believes the Brain Committee overreacted. “If only a handful of doctors were involved, why deal with the whole medical profession?” Spear thought the new policy was a ticking bomb and events would bear him out. “Hardly anybody in the medical profession knew anything about the problem. And the only people who had any experience—the general practitioners—were derided and criticized.” The addicts were taken away from the doctors who knew them and handed over to a new bureaucracy that was determined to whip them into shape. Once again, the best intentions were flattened by the law of unintended consequences. The serious drug users left the system