WOMAN MISTOOK LIGHTER FOR CIGARETTE, INQUEST TOLD

Patient Maybe Shouldn't Have Taken Drug: MD

Teen, Three Clients Of Methadone Clinic Died

A drug-dependent Oshawa woman described as "nodding and incoherent"
should probably not have been taking the potent synthetic narcotic
methadone, an inquest has been told.

Judith Jenkins was described by her daughter, Darlene, as being so
addled that at one point she put a cigarette lighter into her mouth
and, thinking it was a cigarette, tried to light it with a second lighter.

Dr. Douglas Gourlay of Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental
Health -- a recognized expert in methadone drug replacement therapy --
told the Oshawa inquest yesterday that, given her mental state,
Jenkins perhaps shouldn't have been taking the drug.

When Jenkins' family lawyer, Bernie O'Brien, asked if the 44-year-old
woman, "given her mental state at the time," should have had her
methadone dosage reduced, Gourlay concurred.

"Maybe she shouldn't have taken it at all," Gourlay testified during
his second day in the stand at the inquest, which is also examining
the deaths of Steven Pidgeon and David Stevenson, two other patients
of the First Step methadone clinic in Oshawa, and Craig Beers, a
17-year-old student who obtained methadone from someone else who
received it at the clinic.

Methadone, synthesized by German scientists during World War II as a
painkiller, is used to wean addicts off street and prescription drugs.
Jenkins died of a drug overdose in September, 2003, shortly after
being given three doses of methadone for weekend use.

Gourlay described Ontario as a world leader in regulating physicians
and clinics that hand out cocktails of methadone-laced Tang or orange
juice as part of the weaning process. But he expressed the hope that
the inquest will shed some light on why there have been so many
methadone-related deaths among patients in the Oshawa area in recent
years.

Darlene Jenkins, 25, testified earlier that she had taken her mother
to the clinic three days before her death to find out if her "groggy
and incoherent state" was caused by repeated increases in her
methadone dosage during the 10 months she was in treatment at the clinic.

She said she became really concerned after the cigarette lighter
incident, and asked clinic staff about her mother's treatment regime.
She said she was told the dosage was at the "discretion of the doctor"
and was given three doses of methadone to take home for her mother's
use over the weekend.

The inquest was told the woman did take one dose of methadone on
Saturday but was found dead in her apartment Sunday morning. Two other
"carry out" doses of the drug were never accounted for.

The inquest continues.