Pubdate: Sun, 25 Mar 2007
Source: Salisbury Post (NC)
Copyright: 2007 Post Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.salisburypost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/380
Author: Scott Jenkins
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone)

LAWMAKER WANTS STIFFER LAW TO COMBAT FATAL OVERDOSES

A state legislator says that in some cases, methadone is murder. And 
he wants to put that in the law.

N.C. Sen. John Snow has introduced a bill in the General Assembly 
that would let authorities bring a second-degree murder charge 
against a person who illegally provides the methadone that causes a 
fatal overdose. A Democrat from Cherokee County, Snow said he filed 
the bill at the request of his local sheriff after investigators 
identified the drug pushers in several overdose cases, but couldn't 
bring stiff charges. "We've had a number of deaths by overdose of 
methadone," Snow said. "It's a tremendous problem."

The proposed legislation includes other prescription drugs, but 
methadone is the one "we're having the most trouble with." He said 
the bill, which he first introduced in the General Assembly's last 
session, has gotten support from sheriffs across the state.

Methadone has already driven changes in state law and spawned groups 
to fight its devastating effects.

Starting July 1, drug abusers will have a tougher time getting their 
hands on methadone and other controlled substances when the state 
starts monitoring who gets prescriptions and who gives them. A law 
creating the Controlled Substances Reporting System went into effect 
Jan. 1, 2006. The state has spent the last year soliciting bids and 
paying for construction of the system.

Once it goes active, doctors and pharmacists will be able to access 
the Web-based system before dispensing drugs, and pharmacists will be 
required to feed information into it when they fill prescriptions. 
"If it's a controlled substance, it will have to be in that," said 
Mark Van Skiver, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human 
Services, which will oversee the system.

The state hopes the new system will help prevent "doctor shopping," 
in which people go from one physician to another trying to feed their 
addictions with exaggerated or fabricated afflictions, and the 
practice of getting prescription drugs from several different doctors 
to sell them on the street. While the system will keep track of all 
prescription drugs, the legislation that created it specifically 
mentioned the increasing number of deaths linked to methadone.

Jamie Pethel was one of those deaths. The 23-year-old overdosed on 
methadone Sept. 4, methadone that he'd gotten off the street. He was 
one of more than 300 claimed by the drug in North Carolina last year. 
Now his mother, Mary Haynes, a substance abuse counselor, has taken 
up the cause. She is the state contact for HARMD (Helping America 
Reduce Methadone Deaths at www.harmd.org), an organization formed by 
the families of methadone overdose victims.

The group lobbies for legislation that would lead to stricter 
regulation of methadone and against proposed law that it feels would 
be harmful to that effort. HARMD supports legislation in West 
Virginia, for example, that would prevent new methadone clinics, 
which use methadone to treat people addicted to other drugs, from 
operating for profit. The group opposes a bill in Virginia that would 
allow methadone clinics to close on Sundays and give addicts they're 
treating a "take-home" dose no matter how short a time they've been 
in the program. Haynes said HARMD also wants doctors more closely 
monitored so they'll "quit handing it out like candy." She said many 
addicts claim they're in pain to get methadone from doctors because 
they "don't want to jump through hoops at clinics." Haynes said she 
thinks methadone should be "reserved for heroin addicts, for who it 
was made for. I think it should be reserved for the ones that have 
tried every other program. It should be a last resort." At the very 
least, she said, it should be murder to hand someone the thing that kills them.

"I know that my son, nobody made him take it, he was an addict," she 
said. "He was not in the right ... but he paid the ultimate price. So 
why should they get off scot-free?"
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