METHADONE CLINIC SCRAPPED

A Nashville-based group hoping to build a methadone clinic near
downtown Johnson City has abandoned its effort and will now look at
another part of the state, City Commissioner Steve Darden said
Thursday. "The legal battle to prevent a methadone clinic from setting
up shop in Johnson City is over," Darden said during a news conference
at City Hall. "And we have won."

The Johnson City Addiction Research and Treatment Center LLC - which
owns another clinic in Nashville - announced plans in 2002 to build
the clinic at 200 W. Fairview Ave.

It received a certificate of need from the now-defunct Tennessee
Health Facilities Commission, but that decision was overturned in May
through an appeal to state Administrative Law Judge James A. Hornsby.

The clinic then made its own appeal to Davidson County Chancery
Court.

An informal alliance of Johnson City groups - from private citizens to
large health care providers, as well as the City Commission - came
together to fight the location of such a clinic in the area.

That fight ended in November when clinic officials voluntarily
dismissed their appeal.

"It has now abandoned its efforts to establish a methadone clinic in
Johnson City," Darden said, adding that he was unsure what location
the clinic is now considering, but it is not in Northeast Tennessee.

"What this showed was that this was not a community that wanted a
methadone clinic," the commissioner said.

Such clinics treat people addicted to heroin and other opiates by
using the alternative substance methadone. Numerous community members
were concerned such a facility would attract large numbers of drug
users to the area and especially to downtown Johnson City, which is
undergoing a revitalization.

Counting this move as a win, Darden said the city could face similar
battles in the future.

"This does not mean that they can never make another attempt to
establish a methadone clinic here," Darden said.

Yet such a clinic will no longer be able to locate in downtown. The
City Commission passed zoning requirements limiting methadone
facilities to limited manufacturing areas.