Community treatments for heroin and crack cocaine addiction.

摘要

There are several reasons why one should regard with considerable caution the results of the study by John Marsden and colleagues on communitytreatments for heroin and crack cocaine addiction in England.The paper reports that, 6 months afterthe onset of addiction treatment, 37% of heroin users and 52% of crack cocaine users were abstinent from the drug in the 28-days before their first review. But recovery from dependent drug use is about sustained, not temporary, abstinence and although Marsden and colleagues refer to individuals as having been abstinent from these drugs "in" the 28 days before review, we are not told on how many days these individuals were free of all forms of drug misuse over the 28-day period.