Cocaine treatment and recovery is a controversial issue for several reasons, all of which focus on the validity and effectiveness of various methods. The debate centers on questions such as whether addicts can really break their dependency on cocaine and whether any of the current therapies available to addicts has a high enough success rate to justify the $3.2 billion that the federal government annually spends on a variety of therapies.

Still, most American political and community leaders agree that cocaine and crack addicts who seek help should get it. The debate centers on determining the best strategy for curing the addict.

This debate prompted the General Accounting Office (GAO) of the federal government to investigate the effectiveness of various therapies. In 1996 the GAO published the results of a lengthy study focused on cocaine that concluded that no one was sure exactly how...