Subject: US MD: OPED: Drug Clinic Could Cut Crime Pubdate: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 Source: Baltimore Sun (MD) Copyright: 2000 The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper. Contact: 501 N. Calvert Street P.0. Box 1377 Baltimore, MD 21278 Fax: (410) 315-8912 Website: http://www.sunspot.net/ Forum: http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/ultbb/Ultimate.cgi?actionintro Author: Ellen Weber, Richard Boldt Note: The authors are co-counsels for the methadone treatment program's owner, Smith-Berch Inc. DRUG CLINIC COULD CUT CRIME It's too bad The Sun did not follow its own advice to "deal a little more forthrightly with [drug] treatment questions" ("It's not just a clinic," editorial Aug. 3). Not one study supports the editorial's assertion that methadone treatment programs lead to decay in surrounding neighborhoods. On the contrary, more than 30 years of scientific research demonstrates that methadone treatment reduces crime and heroin use and is one of the most effective treatments for opiate dependence. Baltimore County's single methadone program, Awakenings, has operated in a thriving residential and commercial community for 12 years without problems. As for White Marsh Institute, the methadone treatment program that sought to locate in the heavily commercial area along Pulaski Highway, Baltimore County presented no evidence it would pose a risk to the community. The program's immediate neighbors would have been a landfill and a number of small businesses, none of which complained about a medical office bringing more business to the area. Moreover, given the excellent track records of three other private methadone programs its owners have operated in Maryland, county attorneys never challenged the quality of care White Marsh Institute would have provided. The central issue in this discrimination case was whether Baltimore County could justify making methadone treatment programs jump through more zoning hoops than other medical offices, including drug treatment programs that do not dispense methadone, even though its zoning code defines all these services similarly. The county's own attorneys advised county officials as early as 1993 that it could not. According to documents from the county's planning office, "the Baltimore County Office of Law has advised that it would be extremely difficult, legally, for a locality to differentiate between non-profit and for-profit land uses or to require separate standards for methadone clinics as compared to medical offices." Far from missing the mark, U.S. District Catherine C. Blake could have reached no other conclusion than that the county's zoning policy discriminates against methadone treatment programs in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The real value of the court's decision is that it may help save Baltimore County from the human suffering it has perpetuated by refusing to provide treatment services that its families need and, until now, had to search for elsewhere. Ellen Weber and Richard Boldt, Baltimore - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk