FEDERAL PROSECUTOR SAYS CLINIC WOULD LURE DRUG DEALERS

ROANOKE, Va. - A proposed methadone clinic in Roanoke County
could entice opportunistic drug dealers to the area, a federal
prosecutor said. "There may very well be an increase in crime, and
there may very well be an increase in drug trafficking," U.S. Attorney
John Brownlee told the county Board of Supervisors, which opposes
plans for the methadone clinic.

Brownlee said that when he was a federal prosecutor in Washington,
D.C., he saw firsthand that drug dealers often target methadone
clinics on the assumption that they can easily tempt recovering
addicts into becoming users again.

"The drug addicts are vulnerable when they're out there waiting for
the clinic to open, because that's where the dealers will go,"
Brownlee said.

He did not dispute the medical effectiveness of methadone, which a
Galax drug treatment center wants to make available in the Roanoke
Valley for people addicted to opium-based drugs such as OxyContin and
heroin.

"It's clear that people with addictions need help," he said. "Our
animosity and anger should be focused on the drug dealers and not
those who are addicted."

But after his presentation to the board, Brownlee acknowledged that
police say they have not encountered drug dealing problems around
southwest Virginia's only other two methadone clinics, in Galax and
Tazewell County. He said it's possible that police and clinic
officials have worked effectively to prevent possible problems.

"It's been our experience, and it's backed up by the literature, that
there is no basis in fact for his assertions," Phil Herschman,
president of the opiate treatment program division of CRC Health
Corp., said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Carlsbad, Calif.-based CRC owns 31 clinics in 11 states, including The
Life Center in Galax, which wants to expand to Roanoke County. He said
drug-dealing has not been a problem around any of the company's other
methadone clinics.

Board members have heard from angry residents concerned that the
clinic will bring crime, traffic congestion and decreased property
values to the area.

"You have just reinforced what I already suspected," Supervisor Fuzzy
Minnix told Brownlee after his presentation to the board.

The Life Center has until Oct. 1 to ask a zoning board to overturn the
supervisors' denial of a business license.