APPLICATIONS FOR METHADONE CLINICS DROPPED

A corporation that runs a chain of methadone clinics has withdrawn its
applications to open clinics in Greenbrier, Mercer and Mineral counties.

National Specialty Clinics Inc. is in the process of being bought by a
bigger corporation. CRC Health Group Inc., an 8-year-old corporation,
became the nation's biggest for-profit provider of drug and alcohol
treatment this year when it bought a group of clinics in the San Diego area.

CRC now owns 30 methadone clinics in 11 states, including the Life Center
of Galax, a southwestern Virginia methadone clinic that has vied with NSC
in recent months for the right to open methadone clinics in Beckley and
Roanoke, Va.

- - A subsidiary of a subsidiary of CRC is buying National Specialty Clinics,
including its six methadone clinics in West Virginia, for $24 million,
according to documents filed with the West Virginia Health Care Authority.

Those six clinics - in Charleston, Beckley, Huntington, Clarksburg,
Parkersburg and Williamson - will see no changes as a result of the buyout,
according to NSC.

NSC had gotten the state's permission to open methadone clinics in
Greenbrier and Mineral counties, and it had applied for permission to open
one in Mercer County. But NSC can't transfer that permission to its new
parent company, said Dayle Stepp of the Health Care Authority, so it had to
withdraw the applications.

NSC has gotten state permission to open another methadone clinic, in
Weirton. That one, like the other three, never opened. But NSC isn't being
forced to withdraw it.

The Weirton clinic didn't open, a consultant argued on NSC's behalf,
because the Health Care Authority persuaded NSC to listen to people in the
community who didn't want it.

"Without those discussions, [the clinic] would have opened in July 2003,
have already operated for three months and already be treating over a
hundred patients based on the conservative needs assessment included in the
application," consultant Raymona Kinneberg wrote to the Health Care Authority.

NSC had planned to open its Weirton clinic on the second floor above a
bowling alley at 450 Elaine St., according to an August letter to the
Health Care Authority.