In the report On the State of the Public Health 1970, the Department of Health and Society Security have commented on some of the effects of setting up the special clinics for the treatment of drug dependence. They consider that there is room for guarded optimism about the containment of heroin addiction, and state that in 1970 14 treatment units were issuing only about two-fifths of the amount of heroin used 2½ years earlier (respectively over 3,000 grams each month in 1968 and 1,358 grams in December 1970). The number of new patients in 1969 was 652, but only 353 in 1970. The numbers of first notifications of heroin addiction under the age of 21 were 291 in 1969 and 140 in 1970; there were 1,173 first notifications to all DDA drugs in 1969, but only 762 in 1970; and second and subsequent notifications were 1,977 in 1969 and 1,489 in 1970.