The director of Boston State Hospital's addiction services said last night that present efforts to treat heroin addiction will fail unless government acts "to change an ailing lifestyle in America."

"I firmly believe we won't be able to contain the problem of heroin addiction by our current methods," Dr. A. B. Samaraweera told a Harvard Medical School audience.

"Treating the symptoms of addiction is not enough. We have to work on the underlying social factors that cause addiction," Samaraweera said.

He said the federal and state governments have spent "excessive" amounts of money in Boston's methadone-maintenance program for heroin addicts and "a great deal less" money for other drug-related problems.

"Even while barbituates, amphetamines and other drugs are coming to the fore, the whole approach to fighting drug dependency has been focused on heroin," he said.

"Methadone programs certainly have a place in treatment, but they have not shown quick results for large numbers of people," Samaraweera said.

Samaraweera said 20 per cent of the patients on the Boston methadone program drop out. Forty per cent of the persons who continue treatment have already shown a tendency to become alcoholics, he added.

He said government should redirect its money to "therapeutic behavior modification programs" which would attack addiction at the social level.

"If we work on the social forces that give rise to addiction, there may be greater efficacy in our drug programs," he said.

Dr. Vernon D. Patch, director of the Boston City Drug Program and assistant professor of psychiatry at the Med School, said however that support for methadone treatment programs should continue because of "a growing density of heroin addicts in Boston."

"There are many people we're still not reaching." he said. "People continue to use dirty needles, continue to have infections and are exhausting their superficial veins in the arms."

"I've already seen two cases of addicts who shoot through their necks," Patch said. "The methadone program is the most effective single treatment for addicts and must receive high levels of community support."