LET METHADONE TREATMENT WORK

A drug addict who ignored a court in favor of legitimate treatment should
not be punished.

Kimberly Bucklin should not be in the Tazewell County Jail for taking the
medical advice of her doctor over the order of a circuit court judge.

Yet there she sits, facing three years in prison for violating probation -
by maintaining her methadone drug treatment program. Her case is a travesty
of justice, but a sadly logical outcome in the nation's irrational "war on
drugs." Bucklin is a drug addict who landed in court initially for child
abuse and illegal possession of OxyContin. Her addiction may have led her to
commit crimes that brought her, rightly, under the purview of the court. But
drug addiction itself is a medical problem best treated by doctors of
medicine, not jurisprudence.

Bucklin did, indeed, violate the terms of her probation. Doing so apparently
allowed her to function, free of the cravings that make opioid addicts
willing to sacrifice anything - including their children's well-being - to
be "high."

After her arrest, Bucklin became a patient at a methadone clinic and made
rapid progress. Judge Henry Vanover ordered her to discontinue using
methadone, itself an addictive drug, within six months. Against the advice
of the clinic physician, Bucklin tried gradually reducing her dosage. But
when she began having cravings and withdrawal symptoms, she went back to a
higher dose and continued on the drug beyond the court-ordered cut-off.

For now, she has traded drug addiction for a physical dependency on another
drug. And some methadone patients remain dependent for life. But not "strung
out" and dangerous.

Used properly, methadone does not deliver a "high." It merely lets addicts
function, free of cravings, so they can reclaim their former lives.

Whether Bucklin should be punished for this goes to the heart of the
drug-war divide: Should addiction be treated as a medical problem, or fought
as a crime?

Addiction is a cause of crime. Successfully treat, rather than punish, the
former, and the crimes it causes will solve themselves.