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.