INMATE DESCRIBES 'ABSOLUTE HORROR' OF METHADONE WITHDRAWAL

WOODSTOCK — From a Burlington jail Thursday, Shawn Gibson described the
agonizing symptoms of methadone withdrawal. When his attorney asked Gibson
to describe his health, the 26-year-old heroin addict recited a list of
ailments, from fever and body cramps to the shakes and vomiting. "(I'm
doing) very poorly," Gibson said in testimony he delivered to a Superior
Court judge Thursday via telephone. "My stomach is in complete knots. ...
It's an absolute horror, really." Gibson is the latest inmate to protest
the state Department of Corrections' refusal to administer methadone to
prisoners who are taking the drug to kick heroin. In an emergency hearing
in Windsor Superior Court, attorneys from the Prisoners' Rights Office and
the Attorney General's Office haggled over the two main issues in the case
— does the law allow the department to dispense methadone to an inmate and
is the course of treatment Gibson is receiving in jail adequate in the eyes
of the law? Gibson has been held without bail at the Chittenden
Correctional Center since last week after allegedly violating his probation.

He told police he had used heroin when it was discovered that Gibson's
friend, Jill McCarthy, 22, was found dead in Gibson's bedroom.

Her death is not considered by officials to be suspicious. Gibson's
attorneys contended through arguments and physician testimony that the
Corrections Department was being unnecessarily cruel by forcing him to quit
methadone cold turkey. "They shouldn't be second-class citizens," said
Henry Hinton, one of the attorneys representing Gibson in the case who
argued that the department does not by definition become a methadone clinic
by giving an inmate a drug he has been prescribed by another physician.
Hinton and Seth Lipschutz, both members of the prisoners' rights division
of the Defender General's Office, said the department was violating the law
by not providing inmates with an equivalent level of medical care that
would be offered to them had they not been incarcerated. "There can't be
two different standards: one for people in jail and one for people in the
community," Lipschutz said. But the Attorney General's Office countered
through its medical director, Dr. Todd Werner, that the treatment Gibson is
getting for those symptoms absolutely meets the state-imposed medical
standards for inmates. "We are complying with the standard medical
practices," Werner testified. Furthermore, Griffin contended, even if the
department wanted to dispense methadone to heroin-addicted inmates state
law precludes it. "The statute is clear that (methadone) treatment be
provided in only two settings, at hospitals and universities, not in
prison," said William Griffin, the chief assistant attorney general.
Instead of replacing Gibson's heroin addiction with a methadone addiction,
the department is setting a legal and safe course of treatment that will
yield a drug-fee Gibson, Griffin explained. Hinton suggested several ways
that the department could slowly wean Gibson off methadone and still abide
by the law. They included allowing Gibson's mother, Ruby, to go to the
methadone clinic in Greenfield, Mass., where he was being treated, pick up
his dose and deliver it to the jail or granting Gibson a pass to go himself
to Massachusetts to get the drug. "If he has to be off methadone, it has to
be done in a different way," Hinton said The case has attracted a good deal
of attention and controversy, both for its legal and political
implications. The long-term use of methadone to treat opiate addiction,
also known as methadone maintenance treatment, has only recently been
allowed in Vermont. The drug, a synthetic narcotic, has been used for years
to wean addicts off of heroin by blunting the withdrawal symptoms.

But methadone is also addictive and to some, this treatment is viewed as
replacing one addiction with another. One of the detractors of the
treatment is Gov. Howard Dean, who refused to sign a bill allowing
methadone to be used in this manner unless it was done in controlled
settings such as hospitals and medical schools. That law, passed last year,
has yet to yield a methadone clinic, but it has caused continuous problems
for the Corrections Department. Commissioner John Gorczyk released another
inmate, Keith Griggs, early from jail in June rather than give him methadone.

Griggs, who was serving a short sentence on a parole violation, had been on
methadone treatment for two years when he was sent to jail. There are
important distinctions between the cases, attorneys from both sides said
Thursday. Unlike Gibson, Griggs had entered into an agreement with the
department about his methadone treatment.

Included in the conditions of his plea agreement, Griggs was allowed to be
on methadone treatment and the department agreed that if a decision were
made to stop that treatment it would be done gradually. Superior Judge Alan
Cheever — the same judge presiding in the Gibson case — ruled that the
department was bound to honor its agreement with Griggs and ordered
officials to give him methadone.

Gorczyk ignored the ruling and the department appealed to the state Supreme
Court. That court upheld Cheever's ruling. Rather than give Griggs the
drug, Gorczyk let him out early. In the Gibson case, there is no
contractual agreement with the department. And because Gibson is being held
without bail on an alleged violation of probation, Gorczyk does not have
the authority to let him out early. The Gibson case is expected to be
resolved, at least at the lower court level today.

Cheever said he would hear from the final witnesses in the morning and
issue his ruling from the bench. The debate is not one unique to Vermont.
The corrections department in Florida recently changed its policy regarding
the dispensing of methadone after two female inmates died as a result of
withdrawal from the drug. Florida's policy had been to force inmates to
kick methadone cold turkey. Both women were on the drug for addiction to
painkillers. One woman died in 1997 and a second died in June.