LOCATION OF METHADONE CLINIC DIVIDES RESIDENTS

CHAMPAIGN ­ Most of the people packing the Champaign City Council chambers
Thursday night agreed that heroin users should be able to get treatment for
their addiction.

But residents remained sharply divided about whether downtown Champaign is
an appropriate place for a proposed methadone treatment program.

"I guess I'm not the typical junkie, according to stereotypes," said
Kathleen Kalman of Champaign. She spoke at a community forum held by the
city of Champaign Thursday to talk about plans for the methadone program
and let residents voice their concerns and ask questions.

"I don't have a criminal record," Kalman said. "I'm a mother. I had a 3.8
grade point average at college. I went to college. I just made some bad
choices. I work. I pay taxes in this community. I own property in this
community."

Kalman wants to be able to get medical treatment in the community as well.
She now drives four people besides herself to Kankakee every day for
methadone treatment, and she has a waiting list of others who need a ride.

Kendric Speagle, executive director of Harm Reduction Resource, which
provides HIV prevention services, wants to operate a methadone treatment
facility at 12 W. Washington St. in downtown Champaign.

Health care workers, some residents and several others who receive
methadone treatment in Kankakee offered their support for the clinic,
saying it is needed in Champaign.

But many residents and business owners object, fearing the clinic will draw
drug dealers to the area, drive away customers and put children at risk.
They also say the downtown area is already saturated with social service
agencies. And, they objected to being characterized as uncaring because
they don't want the methadone clinic in the downtown area.

"I know the people who come to you are people seeking help," said Carolyn
Baxley of the Orpheum Children's Science Museum. "But the perception is
different from reality. We are very concerned people are going to shy away
from this museum we worked very hard to create."

Speagle, who operates a syringe exchange, said most of his clients live
downtown or frequent the area, so a clinic there would be accessible to
them. He also said it would make it easier for them to seek services at
existing agencies, such as the Mental Health Center.

But several people said they didn't think enough research had been done on
the effect the clinic would have on the existing social service agencies.

"I was surprised and dismayed to learn a methadone clinic was to be opened
within a few blocks of the TIMES Center, the Mental Health Center and
Prairie Center, without notice or thoughtful planning as to its impact on
the capacity and effectiveness of the agencies and its impact on the
community," said Sandy Lewis, CEO of Provena Behavioral Health. She said
such a treatment program should be evaluated more thoroughly and operated
by a licensed addictions service or health provider.

Andrew Timms, president of the Champaign Downtown Association, wanted more
information about the management and funding of the facility and evidence
that it is needed. He said Speagle should have an independent-needs
assessment, guarantee that he would not operate a syringe exchange at the
location, have funding in place, have a board with representatives from all
the areas affected by the clinic, and agree to be mentored by an
established treatment center.

Some also questioned Speagle's qualifications to operate a methadone clinic.

"It's beyond the capabilities and skills of enthusiastic amateurs working
out of storefronts," said Amy Crump, who lives in the Sesquicentennial
Neighborhood, just west of downtown.

Speagle said he is required to hire a doctor as medical director, although
he has not done so yet. He also said that although he has a six-month lease
for the downtown location, he is willing to consider another location if he
was convinced it would be a better place for the clinic. He said he wants
to work with the community, but Crump said that should have happened long ago.

"You would have a lot less upset and angry people if you had come to us
first," she said. "We're not going to sit idly by and let another thing
come in without proof of how it's going to be run and how it's going to be
maintained."

Experts: Methadone lowers crime, benefits community

A methadone treatment facility can be a benefit to the businesses in a
community, said the director of an alcohol and drug treatment program in
Kankakee.

"There is a benefit to the community, a benefit to the business community,
when they establish relationships with our clients who are grateful to what
the downtown business people have done by buying into this, and everybody
wins," said Herb DeLaney, executive director and CEO of the Duane Dean
Behavioral Health Center.

DeLaney spoke at an educational symposium Thursday sponsored by the
Illinois Region 6 HIV Prevention Implementation Group, which provides HIV
prevention services for a 24-county area.

The Kankakee treatment center has been providing methadone therapy in the
downtown area since 1972. When a Kankakee pharmacist first proposed opening
a methadone treatment facility, there was opposition, DeLaney said.

"It came about after quite a few years of lobbying and educating the
community," he said. "Finally it was agreed that was needed, but there was
also almost universal agreement ­ not in my neighborhood."

After almost 30 years, though, the treatment center's board of directors
includes business and professional leaders from the community. It raises
about 20 percent of its funding from the community, and it has plans for
expansion.

DeLaney noted that the center will have a $400,000 payroll beginning in
July, the start of its next fiscal year, and the majority of its patients
that receive methadone treatment are employed, so the treatment program
benefits the local economy. He also said that retail businesses are the
most likely targets of drug users who need to steal to support their
addictions, and methadone treatment helps reduce such criminal behavior.

"From a business standpoint, what sets a methadone treatment facility apart
from other businesses is stigma and attitude," DeLaney said.

That stigma often is attached to mental illnesses, said Dr. SarzCQ Maxwell,
an addictions psychiatrist at the Center for Addictive Problems, a large
methadone clinic in Chicago.

"I believe addiction medicine is today where psychiatry was 50 years ago,"
said Maxwell, who also spoke at the symposium. "We believed schizophrenia
was caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, but we had only
psycho-social treatments. People who were unable to benefit could either
stay sick or, if they disrupted society enough, they could be incarcerated."

Maxwell said methadone treatment is simply medical treatment, like insulin
for a diabetic. She said a chemical imbalance in the brain causes some
people to become addicts and, as with other major psychiatric illnesses,
behavioral interventions alone, such as psychotherapy, are usually not
successful in treating them. Medication is usually necessary as well.

But because of the stigma and criminalization surrounding treatment of
addicts, there are only limited medical treatments available. Maxwell said
she hopes that as more medications become available to treat addicts, such
treatment will become more accepted, as did the treatment of depression
with Prozac.

Maxwell said methadone treatment has been shown to reduce crime, drug use
and risky behavior that can lead to HIV infection. She said its advantages
are that it stays in the system longer than heroin ­ for 24 hours, compared
to four to eight hours for heroin ­ and it can be taken orally rather than
injected.