In the United States there is increasing public awareness of and demand for complementary medicine, including acupuncture and Oriental medicine. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimated in 1993 that Americans made 9 to 12 million visits per year to acupuncture practitioners and spent as much as $500 million on acupuncture treatments. With the baby boom generation currently being the largest population group in the U.S., the need for complementary health care and practitioners is on the rise.

As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, more than 42% of adults have used complementary medicine, spending a total of $21.2 billion on complementary treatments. While in 1997 there were 385.9 million visits to mainstream primary care physicians, there were a whopping 628.8 million visits to complementary medicine practitioners. Reflecting this public demand, an estimated 70 to 80 percent of the nation’s insurers covered some acupuncture treatments in 1996. 2

Alternative medicine use and expenditures increased dramatically from 1990 to 1997. As a result, the budget of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, created by Congressional mandate as part of the National Institutes of Health in 1992, has exploded from $2 million in 1993 to $50 million in 1999.3 Over 300 drug treatment programs now use acupuncture in the U.S., including: community health clinics, court affiliated programs, halfway houses, prisons, jails, Native American clinics, and municipal hospitals.

In 1997, a National Institutes of Health panel deemed acupuncture "an acceptable alternative, or part of a comprehensive treatment program" for certain conditions. "One of the advantages of acupuncture is that the incidence of adverse effects is substantially lower than that of many drugs other accepted medical procedures used for the same conditions."4 Often acupuncture treatments can result in avoidance of surgery, fewer hospital visits and quicker return to employment.