A DIFFERENT DRUG CRISIS

Clinics across the province that supply drug addicts with methadone
could lose their biggest supplier, and drug experts are worried. It
shows, yet again, how little Ontario does to help addicts who want to
get clean.

Ontario Addiction Treatment Centres runs the methadone clinic that
opened on Ottawa's Somerset Street in 2004; it's one of about 25
locations across Ontario where people addicted to opiates such as
heroin can get daily doses of an alternative drug that takes away the
worst withdrawal symptoms.

The trouble is, according to the Ontario College of Pharmacists, the
OATC clinics get much of their methadone by courier from
Kitchener-based pharmacists Wing and Susan Wong, who have been
accused of violating professional rules requiring pharmacists to see
personally the patients they're treating. There are also questions
about whether the methadone the Wongs supply is properly monitored,
and a coroner is investigating the death of a patient at the OATC's
Ottawa clinic. The Wongs are to stop shipping methadone by March 13,
pending a hearing where the Wongs can answer the allegations.

The OATC's founders, Dr. Jeff Daiter and Dr. Michael Varenbut,
oversee the treatment of about 4,000 of Ontario's 13,500 methadone
users, and their chain of clinics has expanded dramatically in just a
few years. They've found an underserved market. So underserved, in
fact, that the college of pharmacists is worried that addicts will be
abandoned if the OATC clinics don't serve them.

If the patients the Wongs supply with methadone don't get it,
withdrawal could push some of them back to illegal drugs -- even some
who have maintained stable and productive lives for years, with
methadone's help.

Helping addicts who want to stop using drugs is not only humane, it's
also good public policy. People with severe addictions are more
likely to need expensive hospital treatment and they're a major drain
on the courts and jails. Any addict who seeks help should be swept
into a treatment system that can respond immediately, and not just by
putting the addict's name on a waiting list.

The system needs to be robust enough that it doesn't depend on one
treatment centre, one team of doctors, or one source of necessary medication.