Pubdate: Sat, 19 Aug 2000
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2000 The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper.
Contact: letters@baltsun.com
Address: 501 N. Calvert Street P.0. Box 1377 Baltimore, MD 21278
Fax: (410) 315-8912
Website: http://www.sunspot.net/
Forum: http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/ultbb/Ultimate.cgi?actionintro
Author: Ellen Weber, Richard Boldt
Note: The authors are co-counsels for the methadone treatment
program's owner, Smith-Berch Inc.

DRUG CLINIC COULD CUT CRIME

It's too bad The Sun did not follow its own advice to "deal a little more
forthrightly with [drug] treatment questions" ("It's not just a clinic,"
editorial Aug. 3).

Not one study supports the editorial's assertion that methadone treatment
programs lead to decay in surrounding neighborhoods.

On the contrary, more than 30 years of scientific research demonstrates that
methadone treatment reduces crime and heroin use and is one of the most
effective treatments for opiate dependence.

Baltimore County's single methadone program, Awakenings, has operated in a
thriving residential and commercial community for 12 years without problems.

As for White Marsh Institute, the methadone treatment program that sought to
locate in the heavily commercial area along Pulaski Highway, Baltimore
County presented no evidence it would pose a risk to the community.

The program's immediate neighbors would have been a landfill and a number of
small businesses, none of which complained about a medical office bringing
more business to the area.

Moreover, given the excellent track records of three other private methadone
programs its owners have operated in Maryland, county attorneys never
challenged the quality of care White Marsh Institute would have provided.

The central issue in this discrimination case was whether Baltimore County
could justify making methadone treatment programs jump through more zoning
hoops than other medical offices, including drug treatment programs that do
not dispense methadone, even though its zoning code defines all these
services similarly.

The county's own attorneys advised county officials as early as 1993 that it
could not.

According to documents from the county's planning office, "the Baltimore
County Office of Law has advised that it would be extremely difficult,
legally, for a locality to differentiate between non-profit and for-profit
land uses or to require separate standards for methadone clinics as compared
to medical offices."

Far from missing the mark, U.S. District Catherine C. Blake could have
reached no other conclusion than that the county's zoning policy
discriminates against methadone treatment programs in violation of the
Americans with Disabilities Act.

The real value of the court's decision is that it may help save Baltimore
County from the human suffering it has perpetuated by refusing to provide
treatment services that its families need and, until now, had to search for
elsewhere.

Ellen Weber and Richard Boldt, Baltimore