MORATORIUM EXPIRES ON METHADONE CLINICS

7 New Facilities Would Bring W.Va. Total To 15

Seven new methadone clinics are applying to set up shop in West Virginia,
now that the state's moratorium on methadone clinic applications expired
last week.

The state Health Care Authority imposed the six-month moratorium to give
itself a break from methadone hopefuls while regulators write the
first-ever state rules for the clinics. Those rules won't be ready until
early next year, said Sheila Kelly of the Department of Health and Human
Resources.

That would be the earliest that any new clinics could actually open.
Meanwhile, seven clinics are already selling methadone in West Virginia,
and an eighth has been approved. Together, they netted more than $4 million
in pure profit last year - more than half of that at one clinic in Charleston.

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The proliferation of methadone clinics, which did not exist in West
Virginia until 2001, was part of what prompted Delegate Marshall Long,
D-Mercer, to introduce legislation this spring that ultimately required the
new rules.

Long, a physician, said he and his family have gotten threatening phone
calls over the legislation.

"I've had some phone calls from people in Virginia about how I'm going to
cause all these people to be in so much agony, they'll have to go out and
commit crimes because they won't be able to get their methadone," Long said.

Methadone is supposed to halt drug addicts' craving for opioids, such as
OxyContin, which are widely abused in Appalachia. West Virginia methadone
clinics attract clients from surrounding states, such as Ohio, which won't
allow for-profit methadone clinics at all.

The new West Virginia rules won't outlaw any methadone clinics, but will
require them to meet certain standards of operation, test their clients for
drugs, report the number of clients who are eventually weaned from the
drug, and more. The state will also fine and penalize clinics that don't
comply.

CRC Health Group Inc., a national methadone chain with six clinics in West
Virginia (including the Charleston clinic), wants to open four more. The
state has already approved one for Weirton. Two more, in Mineral and
Greenbrier counties, were approved in 2001, but they never opened and CRC
has to reapply. The fourth clinic would be in Mercer County.

Colonial Management Group, another national chain, has applied to open
clinics in Charleston, Summersville and Morgantown. Valley-Alliance
Treatment Services Inc. also wants to open a methadone clinic in Morgantown.