Undetected opiate use: A comparison of official drug user files and a private methadone clinic's patient records

To address the question of the extent of undetected opiate use and the characteristics of this user-population, a research study was undertaken comparing a random sample of ‘walk-in’ patients from a private methadone treatment clinic to police intelligence files on drug-users in a major eastern U.S. city. An independent law enforcement agency substantiated the accuracy of the police files, and the treatment agency had procedures which verified the addiction of the patients. The result of the comparison of these two information sources disclosed that: (1) 51.8 percent of the patients were unknown to the law enforcement authorities; (2) a higher percentage of blacks were unknown than whites, and (3) seventy percent of the addicts under thirty years of age were not known to the police as drug users. These findings tend to discount official estimates of addiction rates often based on law enforcement records, and suggest some interesting treatment methods and research questions.