When the First National Conference on Methadone Treatment was held in 1968, the "crime capital of the nation," Washington, DC, had only a handful of heroin addicts participating in one treatment program. This program, called DATRC, was an outpatient abstinence program funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity and operated by the Department of Public Health. A few months later, the Senate District of Columbia Committee dramatized the growing problems of crime and heroin addiction in the nation's capital. The committee concluded that both law enforcement and treatment efforts were failing.1During the hearing, a study from the District of Columbia Department of Corrections was reviewed which demonstrated that the rate of commitment of known heroin addicts to the jail had risen gradually from about 50 to 150 cases a year from 1958 through 1966. Beginning in 1967, however, there was an exponential rise to 450 cases in 1968