Prometa Drug Court Program Shut Down in Wash.
January 11, 2008

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News Summary


A controversial program in Pierce County, Wash., that referred drug-court
offenders to the Prometa treatment regimen has been shut down over concerns
that claims of treatment success had been exaggerated,
MSNBC reported Jan. 11.

For example, program officials didn't account for no-shows and dropouts, and
declared patients "drug free" simply if they did not test positive for drugs
in the 60 days prior to the end of the program. County officials last year
approved an $800,000 treatment program focused on the Prometa drug cocktail
of gabapentin, flumazenil and hydroxyzine, which owner Hythiam Inc. has
touted as an effective treatment for methamphetamine and cocaine addiction.
The Pierce County program has since been widely cited by Hythiam as proof of
the program's legitimacy.

In the wake of the county's decision to pull the program's funding,
Hythiam's stock fell from more than $8 a share in October to $2.75 per share
this week. The company licenses doctors to deliver Prometa to
patients, who pay up to $15,000 for the treatment.

Prometa has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as an
anti-addiction drug, however. And an audit in Piece County found that
Hythiam and the Pierce County Alliance, which administered the
drug-court program, had "greatly exaggerated" Prometa's success rate. "It's
clear to me that we are much more involved in a marketing scheme . rather
than testing real results," said Pierce County Councilman Shawn
Bunney.

Hythiam and Pierce County Alliance officials disagreed, saying the program's
effectiveness will be demonstrated when research is published later this
year. "The people who are using it -- the doctors, patients,
administrators, and drug court judges -- are seeing an impact with it, so I
think the treatment will carry it at the end of the day," said Hythiam
Executive Vice President Richard Anderson. "There were some who did well
with Prometa, though they had some positive (urinalysis) after receiving
treatment," said James Boyle,
deputy director of the Pierce County Alliance. "The auditors view those
folks as not being successful. What we were trying to explain to them was
that not every person who enters chemical dependency treatment will
be drug free from Day One. . It's a process over time."

Among those promoting Prometa on a national level are Andrea Grubb
Barthwell, a former deputy director at the Office of National Drug Control
Policy, and retired Judge Karen Freeman-Wilson, former CEO of the nonprofit
National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP), who both serve on
the company's board of directors.

However, current NADCP CEO West Huddleston has refused to accept Hythiam as
a corporate sponsor until the company produces more scientific evident to
support its claims about Prometa.

Hon. Peggy Fulton Hora
Judge of the Superior Court (Ret.)
Senior Judicial Fellow
National Drug Court Institute




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