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Everywhere you turn today you can’t help but hear about the new epidemic of methadone-for-profit clinics, overdoses or possession charges. Methadone provides a way for drug abusers to get off their opiate of choice, but no solution to kick the subsequent addiction to the new drug.
Methadone is the prescribed drug to eliminate the withdrawal symptoms in opiate addicts. The methadone is taken orally once a day to suppress the narcotic withdrawal from between 24 and 36 hours for drugs like heroin and morphine, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Heroin releases an excess of dopamine in the body, and causes users to need an opiate continuously occupying the opioid receptor in the brain. Methadone occupies this receptor, and is the stabilizing factor that permits addicts on methadone to change their behavior and to discontinue heroin use. But how does the addict get off drugs when you are just replacing it with another addiction?
Methadone-for-profit clinics only offer a temporary solution. Since when is it a good idea to replace one addiction for another? Rather, the clinics should be making the programs temporary, in order to provide a solution recovering addicts to bridge from the heroin to life without any drugs. But when these clinics are for-profit, why would be they want to cut off their clientele? It would like having your local drug dealer telling his strung-out client he or she has had enough heroin. It all comes down to the dollar. Just how backwards are the for-profit clinics’ values? They refer to the men and women who come to their clinic as clients rather than patients.
Over and over, astonishing numbers are being reported about the increase of treatment of opiate addictions in Maine. The Maine Office of Substance Abuse reports an increase from 495 to 3,185 over the past decade. But when the clinics just continue to add people to the equation and neglect to get them off their treatment drug in order to completely cure them of their opiate addition, of course the numbers are going to appear more astonishing.
Boston.com reported that, with new methadone clinics slated to open this winter in Rockland, Bangor and Calais would ease the commutes that an estimated 2,000 opiate addicts make each day or week to obtain treatment. But, a program that is not aimed to completely clean up the drug abusers the number of 2,000 commuting clients will only see increasing numbers. Why would the for-profit clinics want to get people off of the methadone when there are tax-payer based programs that pay for the methadone and reimburse clients for mileage?
In Rockland, the local community and government made things difficult for the proposed Turning Tides methadone clinic. After originally proposing the for-profit clinic on Park St., the city has since rezoned to only allow the methadone clinic only in the outskirts of the city, in a more rural setting on Route 90. The Park St. building is located at the beginning of the downtown district. I can’t imagine many tourists enjoying a drive past a methadone clinic to take their children for a Maine lobster dinner. The site also abuts a local family’s backyard, where their children play on their swing set.
The owners of Turning Tides are serving the city with a lawsuit because there is no available space on the short strip of Route 90 for their clinic. The city had to rezone because it had no way of regulating if the methadone clinic moved in, or where they set up their drug shop. A restaurant or bar has to apply for a liquor license, and the city has control over them, but no control over the distribution of methadone to the clinic’s clients. The clinics do have to obtain licenses from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the Maine Board of Pharmacy before opening.
In Bangor, a Florida-based company has proposed a second methadone clinic, to be located in Maine Square Mall on Hogan Road, next to Quizno’s.
The Bangor Daily News reported that Bangor City Council Chairman Dan Tremble said that the methadone clinic program at Acadia Hospital operates in a hospital setting that he believes provides for close oversight with a level of privacy that he doesn’t believe would be available in a commercial setting.
“The experience we’ve had with Acadia has been good,” Tremble said to the Bangor Daily News. “I would question the need for a second treatment program. I understand Acadia has a waiting list, but I don’t think it’s enough to support another clinic in town.”
In response to the Turning Tides controversy, a methadone law has been introduced to the state legislature by Rep. Ed Mazurek (D-Rockland). Mazurek has a number of co-sponsors on the bill, LD 21, “An Act to Enhance Community Involvement Regarding Methadone Clinics.”
Residents in Rockland and Hogan Road business owners have expressed concern about increased crime to due to the addition of a methadone clinic.
Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood testified to Sen. Susan Collins that there are problems with methadone abuse and the regulation of it. He testified that in 2002 there were at least 30 methadone-caused deaths in the Portland and Cumberland County area.
“I feel helpless because we have two local for-profit methadone clinics dispensing this drug, without, in my opinion, adequate oversight,” Chitwood testified. “The very nature of a for-profit clinics creates incentives to keep people on methadone or street out the amount of time they are taking it before being weaned from it. Furthermore, the clinics are sending people home with methadone with minimal counseling and education.”
“The federal guidelines, which were designed to make methadone treatment more accessible, e.g. take home doses, have created a crisis,” Chitwood said in his testimony. “People are taking their methadone home, but in too many cases, they are selling it or letting their friends take it.”
If we want to help people with drug addictions, they need to be in programs that are focused on getting individuals completely clean and off methadone as well, and keeping the methadone off the streets. The for-profit clinic owners also need to be accountable for the fact that they are moving into communities. People deserve a right to have the clinics and clients out of shopping districts and in medicalbased or rural settings.
Kristin Saunders prefers to have her Quizno’s without a side of methadone.
