ADDRESS THE REAL METHADONE CRISIS

The region's alarming rise in drug deaths argues for greater access to
treatment.

Gov. Mark Warner has one good reason to veto the methadone clinic bill that
lawmakers sent him this year: It is so restrictive, it probably violates the
federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Warner has 213 better reasons for a veto: 213 drug deaths in Western
Virginia last year alone.

The region is in the midst of a prescription drug abuse epidemic that shows
no sign of abating. Western Virginia needs more treatment options for drug
addicts, not fewer.

Yet SB 607 would bar new methadone maintenance clinics within a half-mile of
schools or day-care centers.

Why? Let's see. Virginia localities with methadone clinics report no major
problems, so that can't be it. Addicts on methadone maintenance commit fewer
crimes, so that argues against the bill. Constituents are afraid. Ah! There
you have it.

Constituents are afraid - of bringing addiction into neighborhoods where it
often exists, hidden behind closed doors. Of exposing children to drug
pushers of the stereotypical street variety, when the greater threat may lie
in the medicine cabinet upstairs.

Lawmakers listened to fears rather than reason. Both houses passed the bill
by daunting, veto-proof margins.

Warner may not like the odds against sustaining a veto. Were he to issue
one, though, he would give lawmakers a chance to reconsider, and factor in
far scarier numbers from the state medical examiner's office in Roanoke:

- - Western Virginia's per-capita rate of fatal methadone overdoses -
virtually all from doctor-prescribed pills rather than the liquid dispensed
by maintenance clinics - is at least double the rate of New York City's.

- - Those deaths totaled 85 last year, a 600 percent increase from just five
years ago.

- - The region's total of 213 drug deaths last year is 3 1/2 times the number
just eight years ago.

The governor and legislators should weigh the real toll of drug addiction
against the imagined toll of methadone clinics, and scrap an ill-conceived
effort to thwart the latter.