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Methadone could soon be offered to kick heroin habit

A proposed amendment to the Narcotics Endangerment Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例) that would provide methadone maintenance treatment as an official way to reduce drug dependence was approved by the legislature yesterday.

Following passage of the proposal, prosecutors will be in a position to order drug addicts to receive the treatment rather than go into rehabilitation.

“Although the methadone treatment had been tried at many locations, there is no legal basis for it at the moment,” said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) acting Secretary-General Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑), who proposed the amendment.

“Once the act is amended, drug addicts will have the opportunity to make a new start by receiving methadone treatment,” he said.

Methadone, which is listed as a Class 2 narcotic in Taiwan, will be an effective substitute to combat heroin addiction, Hsieh said.

An additional resolution to the amendment — which would allow government agencies in charge of planning treatment to appropriate budgets and execute the treatment “gradually,” given “the massive expense and equipment the treatment needs” — was also approved by the legislature.

Ministry of Justice statistics show that methadone treatment — which costs about NT$30 per dose — could cost the government NT$2.7 billion (US$88 million) annually.

Hsieh dismissed concerns that the treatment would impose a financial burden on the government, saying that heroin addicts would be required to cover the costs of the treatment.

“If they [the addicts] can afford to buy heroin, they should be able to afford methadone,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hsieh lashed out at the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus for blocking several bills related to president-elect Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) platform on cross-strait trade from being put to committee review.

Hsieh said that with its two-thirds majority in the legislature, the KMT caucus could easily have mobilized its legislators to ensure that all its bills went to committee review.

“Since the beginning of the new legislative session, the KMT caucus has sought to demonstrate its goodwill to the DPP,” Hsieh said.

The DPP caucus has boycotted 15 KMT-proposed bills — including several proposals for the Act Governing Relations between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例) — 48 times since the session began.

“I will tell the KMT caucus that the goodwill we have shown to the DPP caucus should end and that we should solve [legislative] problems in a more effective way,” Hsieh said.

In related developments, the legislature reached a cross-party agreement yesterday to suspend the plenary sessions scheduled for Friday and next week to allow legislative committees to hold additional meetings to review bills.

The legislature failed to agree, however, on a proposal by the DPP to investigate the nationality status of all legislators and a similar proposal by the KMT to investigate all government officials.


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