TIGHTER METHADONE RULES

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman is acting properly by
tightening loose rules surrounding methadone treatments in this
province. It is a move that could result in lives being saved.

A government task force, set up after a series of investigative
reports by the Star, recently found serious problems with the system
dispensing methadone to about 16,000 people in Ontario struggling to
escape drug addiction. Some doctors were subjecting methadone
recipients to unnecessary urine tests, sometimes twice weekly. That
enabled them to bill OHIP about $6,000 each year per patient.

It was a dangerous windfall. Beside the needless costs, this excess
testing risked discouraging patients and ultimately driving them away
from treatment, the task force experts found. Tragically, some people
who plunge back into heroin addiction never emerge.

Smitherman has taken steps to stop excess urine testing by changing
the Ontario Health Insurance Plan's billing codes that cover this
procedure. The measures are expected to save OHIP about $3 million.

In addition, the province will improve addiction treatment by
recruiting more doctors to prescribe methadone and expand the training
of physicians, nurses and pharmacists who work with it. Methadone cuts
an addict's craving for heroin and other drugs but is itself a
controlled narcotic that needs special handling. At the same time, the
College of Physicians and Surgeons will boost efforts to police
doctors who misuse methadone or try to tilt the system for their own
profit.

These measures are a welcome change in an area where there has been
troubling abuse. Systemic problems have been allowed to fester,
perhaps because patients are addicts and win less public sympathy.

Methadone treatments, when properly administered, can successfully
wean people from a life-shattering addiction. Ontarians struggling to
break free of dangerous drugs already face huge obstacles. They at
least deserve a system that makes their struggle a bit easier.