METHADONE TREATMENT SIMPLY SUBSTITUTES ONE ADDICTION FOR ANOTHER

The prospect of a methadone clinic in Scott County has the community up in
arms and no wonder. As many law enforcement officials can attest, such
clinics attract an undesirable element wherever they locate. And, as many
medical experts also conclude, when it comes to detoxifying drug addicts,
methadone's cure is illusory at best.

Designed to wean addicts off heroin, methadone and the clinics that
dispense it have sparked a great deal of concern in the region in the last
few years.

In Tennessee, the outcry produced a bill in 1998 that gave local
governments a veto over the location of new clinics. But the legislation
wasn't constitutional. The regulation of methadone clinics has since been
judged a state responsibility, meaning local governments don't have an
effective voice in the matter.

A similar political paradigm exists in Virginia, where the Department of
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services oversees license applications. A
locality targeted by such a methadone clinic may strenuously object to it,
but that community's wishes are not the final word.

Methadone is a highly addictive Schedule II drug, which places it in the
same category as morphine and other potent painkillers and opiates.
Methadone treatment doesn't cure or rehabilitate a drug addict, but merely
steers him from being addicted from one drug to being addicted to another.

For all the time, professional attention and money that have been lavished
on such addicts for all the years that methadone has been dispensed, there
are no reliable statistics on the effectiveness of the program.

Why?

The reason has to do with money.

Since methadone treatment moved out of carefully monitored, intensive
hospital settings into for-profit clinics, there is no economic incentive
to terminate treatment. The dirty little secret is that most methadone
patients continue treatment indefinitely.

It wasn't supposed to be that way. Methadone was introduced a generation
ago to wean hard-core heroin addicts away from their addiction to become
drug-free. Methadone was envisioned as something which would eventually
fall into disuse.

Instead, it has become an alternate addiction not only for its patients,
but the clinics that have come to depend on the profits.

If methadone treatment, as initially envisioned, is to work effectively,
the private, for-profit treatment paradigm needs to be fundamentally altered.

Why not bring methadone treatment back into hospital settings where only
physicians could dispense the drug in a program that, as intended, weaned
the addict off the addiction? Add to that mandatory weekly drug screenings
designed to catch users of other drugs who would be automatically turned
over for criminal prosecution. Physicians would be required by the state in
which they practice to eventually wean all patients from methadone at a
date certain.

Drug addiction is a terrible thing. But we do no kindness to addicts by
allowing for-profit clinics to prey upon them in the name of compassion
while the average taxpayer picks up the tab, either through state or
federal taxes - or both - into perpetuity. It's past time to make
methadone's use as regulated as it should be rare.