$1.2 billion in taxpayer dollars will be spent on incarcerated individuals in the Commonwealth this year alone. Warren Ferguson, the board chair of the Academic Consortium on Criminal Justice Health, believes that spending a portion of this amount on methadone, a drug used to treat opioid use disorders, could have dramatic positive results on the 1/3 of inmates with narcotic addictions in Massachusetts prisons. Despite the 45-year long history of success methadone has had in treating opioid use disorders, the drug has yet to be approved for use in this state.