Issues in the Treatment
of Female Addiction:
A Review and Critique
of the Literature
WALTER R. CUSKEY
LISA H. BERGER
JUDIANNE DENSEN-GERBER
In 1968 a Special Subcommittee on Alcoholism and Narcotics estimated that there were 110,000 heroin addicts in the United States; in 1971 a Special Study Mission of the House of Representatives placed the figure at 250,000 (Cuskey, Premkumar, and Ligel 1972). The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) estimated that in 1973, 415,200 addicts were concentrated in twenty-four standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSA's); in 1974 a prevalence rate of 399,000 was presented and in 1975 the number was approximately 391,300 (Person, Retka, and Woodward 1977).
These reports did not provide statistics on the number of female addicts included, but estimates have ranged from 20 percent (Cuskey, Premkumar, and Ligel 1972; Mandell, Goldschmidt, and Drover 1973) to over 30 percent (National Institute on Drug Abuse [NIDA] 1976a; New York City Narcotics Register 1973). The conservative estimates indicate that in 1968 there were approximately 22,000 female heroin
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