Overdose victim’s mother wants methadone figures released

The mother of a Canberra woman who died of a methadone overdose says an ACT Government drug program would be more accountable if its success rate were made public.

The mother of a Canberra woman who died of a methadone overdose says an ACT Government drug program would be more accountable if its success rate were made public.Alice Smith died in February 2002 and her parents are continuing to lobby for an end to rehabilitation programs based on addictive drugs such as methadone.Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has ordered an investigation into the ACT alcohol and drug treatment program after complaints of mismanagement and fraudulent record-keeping.Mother Karen Smith says the allegations show there are fundamental problems with the program.”We very rarely see any statistics around the methadone program anyway, particularly in terms of how effective it is,” she said.”We might see numbers of people who are on the program but we don’t see anything about how people have been assisted to get off methadone.”(Source: ABC News: July 2004)