STATE'S METHADONE POLICY LEADS TO WAITING LISTS AT CLINICS

COLUMBUS -- Ohio's resistance to increasing funding for methadone treatment
has caused waiting lists to form at clinics that legally provide the substance.

Critics say this has led to the growth of black-market methadone sales and
an increase in the potential for overdoses.

Methadone chemically blocks an addict's drive to get high from heroin,
morphine, OxyContin and other opiates.

Although also an opiate, methadone is created in a laboratory and satisfies
addicts' cravings without getting them high. Its supporters say it allows
addicts to live stable and productive lives without enduring physically and
psychologically painful withdrawal.

''There is not a question in the scientific community that it's extremely
effective,'' said Leah Young, a spokeswoman for the Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration, the federal agency that regulates
methadone clinics.

But opponents characterize methadone as a crutch that amounts to trading
one addiction for another. Although it was intended as a means for
gradually weaning addicts from drugs, many methadone patients take the drug
for years — sometimes for life.

Ohio's methadone policy has been considered one of nation's most
restrictive, The Columbus Dispatch reported on Sunday.

''We have been criticized for that, but as a department we stand by our
standards,'' said Stacey Frohnapfel Hasson, a spokeswoman for the Ohio
Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services.

She said the department's goal is to help addicts ''become drug-free — not
drug-dependent on methadone.''

The amount of state and local money allocated for methadone treatment in
Ohio more than doubled between 1998 and 2001, to $8.8 million, but it
hasn't kept pace with demand.

The CompDrug clinic in Columbus currently treats about 525 people.

The head of the clinic's methadone program, Ron Pogue, said the clinic
could immediately fill 1,000 slots if it had the money. He said people who
want to receive methadone are placed on a waiting list that would take
about two years to satisfy at current funding rates.

''A lot of people who call and are told how long the waiting list is don't
even bother to get on the list,'' he said.

People who study addiction say the lack of methadone at public clinics has
led desperate users to pay street dealers $50 or more for a dose of the
substance, which costs about $8 at clinics.

Street dealers sometimes gather outside the clinics to sell methadone to
people who don't want to go on waiting lists.

Researchers say that because methadone is released slowly into the
bloodstream, it's easy for people to overdose on the substance and possibly
die if they're not part of a closely monitored treatment program.

An autopsy by the Franklin County coroner's office said an accidental
methadone overdose caused the death on May 2 of Carl Upchurch, a nationally
known author and social activist who lived in suburban Bexley.

Upchurch's relatives declined comment through a family attorney. When his
death was ruled an overdose last month, his sister-in-law said only that it
was ''a complete surprise to the family.''