Pubdate: Mon, 21 Jul 2003
Source: Dayton Daily News (OH)
Contact  http://www.activedayton.com/partners/ddn/
Address: 45 S. Ludlow St., Dayton OH 45402
Copyright: 2003 Dayton Daily News
Author: Associated Press

STATE'S METHADONE POLICY LEADS TO WAITING LISTS AT CLINICS

COLUMBUS -- Ohio's resistance to increasing funding for methadone treatment 
has caused waiting lists to form at clinics that legally provide the substance.

Critics say this has led to the growth of black-market methadone sales and 
an increase in the potential for overdoses.

Methadone chemically blocks an addict's drive to get high from heroin, 
morphine, OxyContin and other opiates.

Although also an opiate, methadone is created in a laboratory and satisfies 
addicts' cravings without getting them high. Its supporters say it allows 
addicts to live stable and productive lives without enduring physically and 
psychologically painful withdrawal.

''There is not a question in the scientific community that it's extremely 
effective,'' said Leah Young, a spokeswoman for the Substance Abuse and 
Mental Health Services Administration, the federal agency that regulates 
methadone clinics.

But opponents characterize methadone as a crutch that amounts to trading 
one addiction for another. Although it was intended as a means for 
gradually weaning addicts from drugs, many methadone patients take the drug 
for years — sometimes for life.

Ohio's methadone policy has been considered one of nation's most 
restrictive, The Columbus Dispatch reported on Sunday.

''We have been criticized for that, but as a department we stand by our 
standards,'' said Stacey Frohnapfel Hasson, a spokeswoman for the Ohio 
Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services.

She said the department's goal is to help addicts ''become drug-free — not 
drug-dependent on methadone.''

The amount of state and local money allocated for methadone treatment in 
Ohio more than doubled between 1998 and 2001, to $8.8 million, but it 
hasn't kept pace with demand.

The CompDrug clinic in Columbus currently treats about 525 people.

The head of the clinic's methadone program, Ron Pogue, said the clinic 
could immediately fill 1,000 slots if it had the money. He said people who 
want to receive methadone are placed on a waiting list that would take 
about two years to satisfy at current funding rates.

''A lot of people who call and are told how long the waiting list is don't 
even bother to get on the list,'' he said.

People who study addiction say the lack of methadone at public clinics has 
led desperate users to pay street dealers $50 or more for a dose of the 
substance, which costs about $8 at clinics.

Street dealers sometimes gather outside the clinics to sell methadone to 
people who don't want to go on waiting lists.

Researchers say that because methadone is released slowly into the 
bloodstream, it's easy for people to overdose on the substance and possibly 
die if they're not part of a closely monitored treatment program.

An autopsy by the Franklin County coroner's office said an accidental 
methadone overdose caused the death on May 2 of Carl Upchurch, a nationally 
known author and social activist who lived in suburban Bexley.

Upchurch's relatives declined comment through a family attorney. When his 
death was ruled an overdose last month, his sister-in-law said only that it 
was ''a complete surprise to the family.''
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