DRUG ADDICTION, DRUG TREATMENT

A report that methadone abuse can be deadly should not rule out the use of
this narcotic in drug-addiction treatment programs.

OXYCONTIN has been the target of intense police and media interest in
Western Virginia, even as abuse of another narcotic has been quietly
reaping deaths on an equal scale.

Methadone, a synthetic narcotic used to treat opiate addictions - including
addiction to oxycodone, the active ingredient in OxyContin - claimed four
lives in the western part of the state in 1997; 44 in 2001. Deaths
attributed to oxycodone went from one to 40 over the same period.
Communities should address both trends, with heightened law enforcement and
more treatment. And the growing need for treatment argues for, rather than
against, easier access to methadone clinics.

At first glance, a report that methadone has proven every bit as deadly as
oxycodone is likely to raise fears about a proposal, made by a Galax drug
treatment program earlier this year, to open a methadone clinic in the
Roanoke Valley.

But the theories that experts offer to explain the methadone deaths are
grimly reassuring, on that count at least.

The assistant chief medical examiner for Western Virginia explains that
alarm about OxyContin abuse may have caused physicians who had been
prescribing it to switch to methadone tablets to treat patients' pain.
"Doctor shoppers," who visit multiple doctors to get multiple
prescriptions, could acquire the drug and sell it illegally.

The other side of that coin is that prescription drug abusers likely are
finding OxyContin harder to get on the street, and are buying substitutes
such as methadone.

Methadone clinics give a liquid form of the drug to opioid addicts to ease
withdrawal symptoms. These patients seem an unlikely source for the drug on
the black market, in part because of the tightly controlled way in which
the methadone is administered and in part because of the effect the drug has.

Methadone does not produce the "high" recreational drug users seek, but
rather eases addicts' cravings. People who abuse methadone probably are
trying to relieve the effects of opioid withdrawal.

They could seek such relief far more safely in a drug treatment program
than on the street.

More clinics would make safe treatment more accessible.

If, as medical experts suspect, many of the overdoses originate with
"doctor shoppers" who are selling methadone tablets on the black market,
law enforcement officers should target that supply line.

State police will be aided somewhat by a new Virginia law that allows them
to collect data about legal drug sales, and thus track individuals'
purchases. Unfortunately, lawmakers saw fit to restrict the data-gathering
to one region of the state, which includes far Southwest, for a two-year
period.

A statewide database would make law enforcement more effective.

Drug addiction increases crime and causes deaths. Communities should be
alarmed by it, but respond with careful reason.