LAWMAKER WANTS STIFFER LAW TO COMBAT FATAL OVERDOSES

A state legislator says that in some cases, methadone is murder. And
he wants to put that in the law.

N.C. Sen. John Snow has introduced a bill in the General Assembly
that would let authorities bring a second-degree murder charge
against a person who illegally provides the methadone that causes a
fatal overdose. A Democrat from Cherokee County, Snow said he filed
the bill at the request of his local sheriff after investigators
identified the drug pushers in several overdose cases, but couldn't
bring stiff charges. "We've had a number of deaths by overdose of
methadone," Snow said. "It's a tremendous problem."

The proposed legislation includes other prescription drugs, but
methadone is the one "we're having the most trouble with." He said
the bill, which he first introduced in the General Assembly's last
session, has gotten support from sheriffs across the state.

Methadone has already driven changes in state law and spawned groups
to fight its devastating effects.

Starting July 1, drug abusers will have a tougher time getting their
hands on methadone and other controlled substances when the state
starts monitoring who gets prescriptions and who gives them. A law
creating the Controlled Substances Reporting System went into effect
Jan. 1, 2006. The state has spent the last year soliciting bids and
paying for construction of the system.

Once it goes active, doctors and pharmacists will be able to access
the Web-based system before dispensing drugs, and pharmacists will be
required to feed information into it when they fill prescriptions.
"If it's a controlled substance, it will have to be in that," said
Mark Van Skiver, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human
Services, which will oversee the system.

The state hopes the new system will help prevent "doctor shopping,"
in which people go from one physician to another trying to feed their
addictions with exaggerated or fabricated afflictions, and the
practice of getting prescription drugs from several different doctors
to sell them on the street. While the system will keep track of all
prescription drugs, the legislation that created it specifically
mentioned the increasing number of deaths linked to methadone.

Jamie Pethel was one of those deaths. The 23-year-old overdosed on
methadone Sept. 4, methadone that he'd gotten off the street. He was
one of more than 300 claimed by the drug in North Carolina last year.
Now his mother, Mary Haynes, a substance abuse counselor, has taken
up the cause. She is the state contact for HARMD (Helping America
Reduce Methadone Deaths at www.harmd.org), an organization formed by
the families of methadone overdose victims.

The group lobbies for legislation that would lead to stricter
regulation of methadone and against proposed law that it feels would
be harmful to that effort. HARMD supports legislation in West
Virginia, for example, that would prevent new methadone clinics,
which use methadone to treat people addicted to other drugs, from
operating for profit. The group opposes a bill in Virginia that would
allow methadone clinics to close on Sundays and give addicts they're
treating a "take-home" dose no matter how short a time they've been
in the program. Haynes said HARMD also wants doctors more closely
monitored so they'll "quit handing it out like candy." She said many
addicts claim they're in pain to get methadone from doctors because
they "don't want to jump through hoops at clinics." Haynes said she
thinks methadone should be "reserved for heroin addicts, for who it
was made for. I think it should be reserved for the ones that have
tried every other program. It should be a last resort." At the very
least, she said, it should be murder to hand someone the thing that kills them.

"I know that my son, nobody made him take it, he was an addict," she
said. "He was not in the right ... but he paid the ultimate price. So
why should they get off scot-free?"