Thus are hospitals rewarded for failure. All in all, the nation's treatment system almost seems designed to make sure addicts don't get help. By any journalistic standard, this would seem a good story. Yet, in an extensive reading of newspaper clips, I found just one in-depth account of the trouble addicts have in getting into detox in New York City, the nation's drug capital. The four-part series appeared six years ago, in the Los Angeles Times.
Articles detailing the gaps in the treatment world are equally rare.
With more than 800,000 heroin addicts in the U.S., he noted, the nation's methadone clinics can accommodate only 115,000 of them. Eight states have no methadone at all. Slevin interviewed parole officers who were working the phones on behalf of their clients, desperately seeking treatment for them before they returned to a life of drugs and crime. Journalists could tell similar stories in almost every large city. In terms of drama, reporting on the lack of treatment slots or the barriers to entering detox cannot compare with stalking drug lords in Mexico or watching coca fields being sprayed in Colombia.