ATTORNEY TAKES LEAD TO BLOCK METHADONE CLINIC

BRISTOL, Va. - Attorney Michael Bragg has taken the lead in helping his
neighborhood stand against a planned methadone clinic on Old Dominion Road.

Bragg knows from working with clients and from personal experience the toll
drugs can take on a life. And he believes methadone clinics are not the
avenue to get off drugs.

Through his faith in God and by surrounding himself with the right people,
Bragg said he has been able to turn his life around.

He was disbarred in 1986 for charging clients for services he did not
perform. According to records from the state Bar Association, he told
officials then that he had been drinking and using marijuana and cocaine
and was unfit to practice law.

His license was reinstated in 1995.

"In my past, I was a drug user, but not ever addicted. I didn't have to
seek treatment," he said.

Bragg said he stopped using drugs through willpower and faith.

"It's just a question of attitude and doing what is right - having people
expect something out of you and expecting it out of yourself."

But Bragg, who in the late 1980s was arrested and later acquitted on
cocaine-related charges, said his past is not the issue.

"I am not the story. The story is the community and Appalachian Treatment
Services," he said, referring to the South Carolina firm that wants to set
up a methadone treatment clinic near Lowry Hills subdivision.

More important to him is keeping what he views as an ineffective and
dangerous drug-treatment center out of the community.

Bragg said he doesn't believe methadone clinics work. Worse, he said, they
can feed the drug problem. The therapy, he said, takes advantage of those
who are addicted.

Methadone is a synthetic drug used to wean addicts off substances such as
heroin and oxycodone.

"There are numerous cases in federal court where there have been oxycodone
distribution rings where people were meeting paying customers at methadone
clinics, and that is part of what gets them involved in distribution and
ultimately locked up in a federal penitentiary."

In his public life, Bragg said, he regularly represents drug offenders in
court and knows firsthand that methadone is not a successful treatment for
opiate addiction.

Many of his subdivision neighbors share his view that methadone treatment
simply substitutes one addiction for another, Bragg said.

They don't want a methadone clinic anywhere in the county, he said.

"We do not believe methadone clinics are appropriate at any place," Bragg
said. "They are not the appropriate treatment for people with those kinds
of addictions. They take advantage of the people who are seeking treatment.
They then cause problems for the community immediately around the clinic,
and, we think, beyond that to the broader community."

Lowry Hills homeowners, Bragg included, also worry that a clinic at the
sole entrance to the subdivision would bring with it increases in crime and
decreases in property values.

The neighborhood now is awaiting a decision from Washington County Zoning
Administrator Mark Reeter, the county administrator, on whether the
methadone clinic is permitted under the area's B-2 zoning. B-2 is open for
general business, including doctor's and dentist's offices and pharmacies.

The decision is expected within the next two weeks.

Bragg said he sees little room for debate. Methadone clinics don't qualify
as health-care practices in the B-2 zone, he said.

On top of that, Bragg said, the proposed site for the clinic - inside a
manufactured display home - already is illegal and should have been moved
years ago.

Bragg, at a recent called Board of Supervisors meeting, cited county zoning
ordinances stating that manufactured homes are not allowed in the B-2 zone
unless a public meeting is called. Even then, he said, they can be used
only as a security post for a business, an office for a manufactured home
dealer or as an industrial mobile office.

"Its presence there now is illegal, and the county can and should order the
removal of that manufactured home as an abandoned, nonconforming use,"
Bragg said at the meeting.

Should Reeter's decision go against the wishes of Lowry Hills residents,
Bragg said, they are prepared to fight it - all the way to the Supreme
Court, if necessary.

Although he is providing his services free of charge, Bragg said he
believes he would have no problem gathering funds should a long trial occur.

"I do not anticipate in a case like this that (court costs) would be that
high," Bragg said. "I believe if I need money for court costs and
litigation expenses, the word would go out and we would raise it in two or
three days."

Although Bragg said he doesn't know whether Lowry Hills residents are aware
of his past drug use, he said he doesn't think it is relevant to the
methadone fight.

At the called supervisors meeting, Lowry Hills Homeowner's Association
President Wes Rosenbalm said "drug users come in different levels. And we
don't want any of their levels in our neighborhood."

Rosenbalm said that remark was in response to a statement explaining that
methadone clinic users don't have needles hanging out of their arms.

"We all make mistakes and we all have to live with it and pay the
consequences of our mistakes," Rosenbalm said. "That doesn't take away your
right to speak on an issue or the same issue years later.

"I knew Mike had run into some problems, and I knew a little bit about it.
But I don't have a problem with it. To me, it's not a negative issue; it's
a positive issue. You have somebody who may understand the situation a
little better."