The Narcotic Addict Treatment Act (NATA) addressed the two main sources of methadone diversion, namely, practitioners and patients. First, the act required that practitioners who wished to dispense narcotics drugs for maintenance treatment or detoxification needed to obtain a separate registration from the Attorney General; it also specified that such registration could be suspended for failure to comply with the treatment standards established by the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (now Health and Human Services) and the security standards established by the Attorney General. Practitioners who continued to dispense narcotic drugs for maintenance or detoxification without a registration could be prosecuted under provisions of the Controlled Substances Act. Second, the potential for diversion by patients was addressed in the section that required the Secretary to establish standards (after consultation with the Attorney General) for the amount of methadone that could be provided to patients for unsupervised use (i.e., take-homes).

The NATA created a closed distribution system, in which only approved programs could purchase methadone for treatment. This new system effectively put out of business the doctors who had been prescribing methadone indiscriminately, without regard for treatment. The impact of the NATA, combined with that of the FDA regulations of December 1972, which became