Series: The Killer Cure (Introduction)

HOW WE DID IT

The Sunday Gazette-Mail's investigation of nationwide methadone
deaths was prompted by an obscure entry in a West Virginia vital
statistics report.

Accidental poisoning deaths in the state had shot up dramatically in
five years, reporter Scott Finn noticed. He thought it might be
toddlers ingesting cleaning supplies, or maybe people overdosing on
OxyContin. He called the medical examiner's office to check. No, he
was told. The main culprit was a drug called methadone.

Reporter Tara Tuckwiller had been reporting on methadone clinics --
treatment centers that sell daily doses of legal methadone to calm
addicts' cravings for illegal drugs -- since they began to crop up in
West Virginia in 2001. - advertisement -

For more than six months, Tuckwiller and Finn investigated why so
many people are dying after taking methadone. They first examined
whether the treatment clinics were the source of the methadone
involved in the deaths.

But they discovered another cause -- methadone being prescribed to
treat pain -- after interviewing medical examiners, epidemiologists
and other experts across the nation.

Other states were experiencing similar increases in methadone
overdoses, they found.

A tip from a state health official led them to the National Center
for Health Statistics, which collects data from death certificates
across the country. The Center ran an analysis of this data and
provided it to the Sunday Gazette-Mail for this report.

Officially, the "cause of death" in each of these cases is poisoning,
not any specific drug. Medical examiners say methadone contributes to
the poisoning death. Sometimes, more than one drug is listed as
contributing to death.

Critics say medical examiners are too quick to blame methadone for
deaths that could have been caused by other drugs. They also point
out that the majority of overdose deaths involving methadone also
include other drugs.