CITIES SURPRISED BY METHADONE CLINICS

But Mercer County needs one, its health director says

Sixteen months ago, the state gave permission for a for-profit
methadone clinic to open in the Northern Panhandle.

Dean Harris, the mayor of Weirton - where the clinic is scheduled to
open by the end of the summer - said nobody informed him. The first he
heard about it was from news reporters, who started calling him after
a Sunday Gazette-Mail article last week mentioned National Specialty
Clinics' plans to sell methadone in Weirton.

Harris isn't sure the city wants the clinic.

"We're trying to make Weirton attractive" to businesses, he said. He
wonders whether the clinic - which NSC says will attract drug addicts
from seven West Virginia counties and five Ohio counties - will
encourage those addicts to settle in Weirton.

"We want to be regional," Harris said. "But I'm not sure this is the
kind of regional we want to be."

Government officials in Lewisburg, Mineral County and Mercer County -
where NSC plans to open more methadone clinics - hadn't heard about
the clinics, either.

In Lewisburg, the mayor's receptionist said she got "calls after calls
after calls" from people wanting to know what was going on, after the
Sunday Gazette-Mail article said that NSC plans to open that clinic
shortly after the Weirton clinic.

That was the first Lewisburg officials had heard of
it.

NSC has opened six methadone clinics in West Virginia since 2001. The
clinics sell methadone, a synthetic narcotic, mostly to OxyContin
addicts. The clinics charge about $12 a day for the methadone, which
is much cheaper than the illegal drugs the methadone replaces.

Methadone-treatment advocates point to research that shows that
addicts who undergo methadone treatment - perhaps staying on methadone
for life - are much more likely to stay off illegal drugs.

The Charleston clinic alone netted $1.4 million in profits for NSC
last year, according to financial information NSC is required to file
with the state. The business owes its success to Southern West
Virginia's high rate of OxyContin abuse.

"Off the top of my head, it does not sound particularly enticing that
we possibly have OxyContin addicts in West Virginia," Lewisburg Mayor
DeEtta King Hunter said. "It doesn't speak well of West Virginia, yet
again."

A cluster of clinics

Another corporation, which operates two methadone clinics in southwest
Virginia, asked the state Health Care Authority two years ago for
permission to open one in Beckley. NSC now has its own methadone
clinic in Beckley.

The Virginia corporation, Galax Treatment Center Inc., "is not
currently pursuing that" Beckley clinic, said marketing director
Deborah May.

Meanwhile, NSC has asked the state for permission to open a methadone
clinic in Mercer County - 35 miles away from one of Galax's clinics.

The new NSC clinic would attract 82 addicts each year, from four West
Virginia counties (Mercer, McDowell, Summers and Monroe) and four
Virginia counties (Bland, Giles, Pulaski and Wythe), NSC told the state.

One of Galax's two Virginia clinics is a 35-mile drive from the Mercer
County city of Bluefield. The other is a 70-mile drive from Bluefield.
The clinics are located in counties that border on Mercer, Bland and
Wythe counties.

In its application to the state, NSC said that methadone treatment "is
not provided by any existing provider in the service area."

May said her corporation's clinics do cover that exact area. One has
been dispensing methadone for three years, and the other for two years.

But not all methadone customers can drive, said Kathy Wides, Mercer
County's health director. And they must go to the clinic every day to
drink their doses, at least at first.

"If you don't have a car and you have to get a neighbor or friend to
take you every day, that can be a real obstacle," Wides said. "And
there's no public transportation [in Southern West Virginia]. You
can't catch a train or an inner-city bus."

Wides also is an emergency room doctor at Bluefield Regional Medical
Center, and medical director of Mercer Health Right, a clinic for low-
income people.

She thinks the county "absolutely can use" a methadone
clinic.

"I'm sorry that we need it," she said. "But, like all of the Southern
West Virginia counties and Appalachian communities, we've been hit
pretty hard with the abuse of OxyContin and Lortab," another
prescription narcotic.

"I work in the emergency department, so I see it firsthand ...
[Addicts] come to me, frankly, looking for drugs."

Many addicts looking for help approach Health Right, Wides
said.

"We have people who could undergo detox, were there a closer facility,
because these people don't have their own cars.

"We've had more than a couple people who said, 'You know, I'd do it,
if I could get there.'"