METHADONE

TREATMENT THAT WORKS

I have been watching Roanoke's struggle with the opening of methadone
maintenance treatment from a distance. On one hand, you have a
burgeoning problem with addiction and there are those who wish to
treat the victims. On the other, you have those who feel that shutting
their eyes and pretending addiction doesn't exist will make it all go
away.

For more than 30 years, the state of West Virginia pretended that very
thing, and attempts to open MMT clinics were stonewalled until the
proponents gave up in frustration. It was easy to identify addiction
and the addict with lawlessness while the city of Charleston was
struggling with an again-growing heroin trade in the 1990s. But the
explosive epidemic of OxyContin abuse brought opiate addiction home to
our doctors' offices and clinics and changed the face of the addict
from street junkie to rural patient.

While the public slept in denial, an MMT provider from Indiana came
into town armed with a knowledge of how to open and operate MMT
clinics. In 2001, the first of the state's seven for-profit MMT
clinics opened in Charleston.

Within a few months, the demand for heroin on the city's streets had
all but dried up, and inroads into the OxyContin problems were
beginning. At one point, more than 2,000 patients were weaned from
illicit doses of opiates and brought into the treatment community at
the Charleston facility alone.

Within two years, West Virginia would come to be known as having a
model MMT program licensed by its Department of Health and Human
Resources, without experiencing any of the crime or "elements" your
police officials so vocally fear. (Shouldn't they fear the untreated
addict who is desperate for drugs more than those who openly seek help
at the local clinic?)

The biggest debate to date in West Virginia over MMT seems to be the
fact that clinic operators are out-of-state, for-profit operators, an
argument scarcely heard with the opening of a traditional hospital or
clinic in other fields of medical practice. In fact, one of West
Virginia MMT's loudest detractors is a for-profit addiction doctor
from the Bluefield area.

While some will always find fault, MMT has worked well treating
addicts for more than 30 years, leading their lives away from the
crime and degradation of active addiction.

Don't waste your energy on groundless fears. Let this proven treatment
work in your community. If I'm wrong (and I won't be), then you can
consider closing the doors.