Pubdate: Sun, 26 Jun 2005
Source: Bluefield Daily Telegraph (WV)
Copyright: 2005 Bluefield Daily Telegraph
Contact:  http://www.bdtonline.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1483
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm (Oxycontin/Oxycodone)

HONEYMOON MAY BE OVER FOR METHADONE CLINICS IN CENTRAL APPALACHIA

MIDDLESBORO, Ky. (AP) - Faced with increases in violent crime that came 
with widespread drug addiction, some of the hardest hit communities in 
central Appalachia wanted help so badly that they embraced even methadone 
clinics.

No more.

Some 300 people, many carrying anti-methadone placards, protested outside 
Middlesboro City Hall this month, signaling what may be an end to the free 
pass the clinics have enjoyed in the mountain region since illegal 
trafficking in the painkiller OxyContin began wreaking havoc about five 
years ago.

Mac Bell, state narcotic authority administrator in the Kentucky Cabinet 
for Health and Family Services, said the opposition to the Middlesboro 
clinic has been overwhelming.

"This is the first time in my history that we have had such a public 
outcry, and I've been doing this for 22 years," he said.

Dr. Ronald Dubin, a physician who leads a group involved in the Middlesboro 
fight, said a methadone clinic would make the city a magnet for addicts 
from other parts of central Appalachia, including southwestern Virginia, 
which currently is under a state-imposed moratorium on new methadone clinics.

"The location is terrible," Dubin said. "It's the worst location in the 
city to put up a methadone clinic - one block from a Catholic school, three 
blocks from a public elementary school, and right in the middle of a 
shopping area."

A dose of liquid methadone once a day helps addicts escape their cravings 
for illegal drugs and avoid withdrawal symptoms. Although patients do not 
get high when they use the drug properly, they do become dependent on it.

Clients pay about $85 a week for methadone, drug screening and counseling 
at the clinics. One OxyContin pill purchased on the black market can cost 
that much.

For some communities, methadone was a welcome alternative to OxyContin, 
which drug addicts crushed and snorted or mixed with water and injected to 
get the same kind of euphoric high that heroin brings, thus its nickname 
heroine of the hills.

In the past five years, clinics opened without opposition in five eastern 
Kentucky towns and seven West Virginia towns.

When used for treatment of addiction, methadone can be dispensed only in 
the special clinics.

Ed Ohlinger, regional director for outpatient services in Virginia for CRC 
Health, said some rural residents have to drive up to four hours round trip 
to get methadone because their communities don't want such clinics.

Residents in Abingdon, Va., were successful in a fight to keep a methadone 
clinic out of their town, and community and political leaders in Dryden, 
Va., now are battling a proposed clinic there. Residents in Roanoke, Va., 
and Wheeling, W.Va., fought unsuccessfully to keep clinics out.

"I think with many people there's still misunderstanding," said Merritt 
Moore, adult treatment coordinator in the West Virginia Division of 
Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. "They don't understand the effectiveness of the 
treatment."

Virginia has about 20 methadone clinics, three of which are in the 
mountainous western part of the state in Cedar Bluff, Galax and Roanoke. 
Denise Clayborn, a consultant to Virginia's state drug-abuse program, said 
the moratorium on new clinics will remain in place until a review is 
completed to determine if regulations on methadone clinics are adequate.

The number of methadone clinics have grown nationwide from 775 to 1,100 
over the past 12 years, according to the American Association for the 
Treatment of Opioid Dependence in New York. The number of people being 
treated has grown from 115,000 to 205,000 over the same period.

Dubin said he believes some clinics have opened without opposition because 
residents didn't know about them until it was too late. He is lobbying for 
a state law that would bar methadone clinics from opening within a mile of 
a school or daycare center and would require the state to publish notices 
in newspapers in communities where methadone clinics are proposed.

Barbara Smith, co-owner of the proposed Middlesboro clinic, said it could 
initially serve up to 120 clients who would drive in each day to swallow a 
liquid dose of methadone. She said these will be people who are trying to 
kick their addictions, not drug-crazed criminals who are a danger to the 
community.

"The misinformation has escalated into something totally out of hand," she 
said. "We're trying to get facts out to the people."

The fact is, Smith said, the clinic is needed to help treat addicts in the 
Middlesboro area. Amanda Turner, 26, said she has to drive more than two 
hours roundtrip from Middlesboro to a clinic in Corbin each morning to get 
a dose of methadone.

Sherry Turner, the young addict's mother, is one of the strongest 
supporters of the clinic, and she has been trying to persuade others to 
drop the opposition.

"Methadone seems to be the only thing helping my daughter," she said. "I 
would prefer her not to have take anything, but I'd rather her have 
methadone than be out here trying to get drugs off the streets."
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