title: Methadone maintenance treatment: disciplining the 'addict'.
abstract: This article examines key aims, objectives, technologies, strategies, and procedures utilised in Australian methadone maintenance programs over the past thirty years. An examination of the major policy documents reveal that, in addition to medico-health concerns, methadone programs have been strategically deployed to manage specific sociopolitical problems including illicit drug use, crime, and the spread of infectious diseases. The techniques, technologies, and procedures utilised in methadone programs and the 'disciplinary monotony 'of the methadone regime itself aim to produce a more compliant, conforming, and self-regulating subject. It is argued that the promotion of methadone maintenance as a 'treatment' modality obscures these disciplinary objectives and the political goals that have fostered them.
authors.affiliation: University of New England.
authors.forename: Cary
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bennett
mesh_terms: D001294:Attitude to Health; D001315:Australia; D003415:Crime / Q000266:history / Q000517:prevention & control; D055030:Drug Users / Q000266:history*; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000266:history / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000635:transmission; D006291:Health Policy / Q000266:history*; D006556:Heroin Dependence / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000266:history* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D008691:Methadone / Q000266:history* / Q000627:therapeutic use; D058850:Opiate Substitution Treatment / Q000266:history* / Q000592:standards / Q000639:trends; D010349:Patient Compliance; D011057:Politics; D015819:Substance Abuse, Intravenous / Q000150:complications / Q000266:history / Q000534:rehabilitation
chemical_list: D008691:Methadone