The Methadone Clinic Abolition Collective (MCAC) is committed to the abolition of the methadone clinic system, also known as opioid treatment programs (OTPs.) The clinic system was created in the 1970s under the Nixon administration and linked heroin use with race and crime. It was designed by the Drug Enforcement Administration to surveil and punish Black and Latino drug users.

OTPs are siloed off from mainstream medical care and are the physical embodiment of stigma.

People who take methadone are oppressed by a culture of cruelty that exists in every OTP. They are forced to commute to the clinic 6 or 7 days a week at great expense to drink a dose of medication under the suspicious eye of a nurse, weekly counseling and drug testing are mandatory, take-home medication is strictly controlled and must be “earned.” Work, school, and travel are difficult because people are forced to make the methadone clinic the center of their life. It is inhumane.

Methadone clinics are predicated on the idea that the medication they dispense is a privilege, not a right. There is no other area of healthcare where patients are required to demonstrate, on an almost daily basis, that they deserve their medicine.

People who take methadone are not free.

We do NOT believe OTPs can be reformed. They never should have been created in the first place. The solution is simple: All healthcare providers should be able to write a prescription for methadone to be picked up in a pharmacy. Just like every other medication in the pharmacopeia.

Methadone is harm reduction, the cartel clinic system that controls access is harm production.

Through education, art, film, and protest, the goal of MCAC is to free methadone by abolishing the racist, carceral clinic system.

JOIN US!