Pubdate: Fri, 12 Sep 2003
Source: Standard-Speaker (PA)
Copyright: 2003 The Standard-Speaker
Contact:  http://www.standardspeaker.com/pages/home1.html
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1085
Author:  Jim Dino
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone)

COUNSELOR - METHADONE CLINIC DESPERATELY NEEDED IN AREA

Having a methadone clinic in a neighborhood is safer than having active 
drug addicts living there, a local drug and alcohol counselor says.

Ed Pane, executive director of the Serento Gardens drug and alcohol program 
in Hazleton, lauded the approval by Luzerne County Court of a methadone 
clinic in Plains Township.

Pane said such a clinic is desperately needed in Luzerne County.

"We are losing 97 percent of the heroin addicts we treat here because we 
can't keep them," Pane said. "The heroin overdose death rate in Luzerne 
County is higher than the rate in Brooklyn. Aside from alcohol, heroin is 
the second biggest problem we have."

Pane said the clinic will treat heroin addicts by giving them methadone, 
then slowly weaning them off it.

"This is not a maintenance program," Pane said. "When a person goes into 
this program, they are given a like amount of methadone to start, but then 
are slowly weaned off it. It takes, on the average, about 18 months."

Having an active drug addict live near you is more dangerous than the 
clinic, Pane said.

"A person with a $200-a-day habit has to steal around $3,000 a day to 
support," Pane said, referring to the fact that they have to re-sell the 
merchandise they steal, and get whatever they can for it. "It creates a 
tremendous amount of crime. In this clinic, it will cost about $7 a day to 
treat them. Incarceration costs about $50 a day.

"It is not the answer, but it is an answer," Pane said. "I compliment Mike 
Donahue, the county's drug and alcohol director, and Choices, for hanging 
in there with this program."

The Plains Township Zoning Board had rejected the clinic, saying it did not 
fit the description of clinic in the township zoning code.

So applicants appealed the case to Luzerne County Court, where Judge 
Gifford Cappellini Wednesday overturned the zoning board's decision, saying 
the zoning board used a "narrow interpretation" of the law to deny the clinic.

The site of the clinic is in a commercial industrial park, which includes 
other medical clinics.
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