GROUP FIGHTS CLINIC MEASURE

Four days after a bill that proposed state regulations on methadone clinics
was introduced in the House of Delegates, a Charleston methadone patient
announced that he has formed a group to fight it.

The West Virginia Methadone Advocacy Project started with four people, but
"its membership has increased rapidly in the last couple days," coordinator
Daniel White said Monday.

"We suddenly find ourselves with about 25 members," thanks to fliers posted
in the Charleston methadone clinic and on the project's Web site
(http://home.earthlink.net/~wvmap/). The members include people who depend
on the clinics for their daily methadone doses and "people at the corporate
level - clinic owners."

But, White added, it is "definitely not a lobbying group for clinic owners."

With the number of methadone clinic applications in West Virginia "going
from zero to 15 in a real short span of time," as state Health Care
Authority Chairwoman Sonia Chambers said, some state policymakers have
decided that West Virginia should start regulating the clinics.

Three weeks ago, the HCA put an immediate moratorium on new methadone
clinic applications. The moratorium will last 180 days, or until state
health-plan standards are developed for the drug treatment clinics.

Last week, six delegates introduced a bill (HB4387) that would require the
state Department of Health and Human Resources to regulate methadone
clinics by July. The department would impose standards of operation, rules
on staff qualifications, ratios of staff to patients, a continuum of care
(other types of treatment offered), required drug testing for participants,
and fines and penalties for clinics that break the rules. The bill also
states that methadone clinics must release information - including the
names of clients - to authorized police officials. Police who tried to
investigate methadone street deaths had complained that they couldn't find
out if suspects had obtained methadone at a clinic, because the clinics
wouldn't release clients' names.

Clinics shouldn't be forced to release that information, White said. "This
is not New York City. These people are not street junkies and heroin
addicts," he said. "They're mostly pill addicts - people who have gotten in
trouble through medical care."

Delegate Marshall Long, D-Mercer, is a family doctor and the main sponsor
of the bill. He said the law enforcement provision simply brings methadone
clinics into compliance with a West Virginia law that requires dispensers
of controlled substances - including methadone - to release information to
criminal investigators.