If the addict went to work, or made an effort to go to work, and stayed out of trouble with the police, then the clinic would give him an opiate regularly. The reply to the second argument about the 1920s clinics is not so easy. On the one hand, the New York City clinic did not work. There were numerous problems with large numbers of patients and few or no controls. We are in a very bad state here in New York.
Conditions are probably worse than ever.
I am told, and I believe it to be true, that more opiates are peddled than ever before. The Board of Health clinic has not been a success. This, however, was only one of the clinics, and many of the others had far different experiences. Most were closed within the first year or two of operation. The New York clinic was open only 11 months.