Pubdate: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 Source: Roanoke Times (VA) Copyright: 2004 Roanoke Times Contact: http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/368 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone) ADDRESS THE REAL METHADONE CRISIS The region's alarming rise in drug deaths argues for greater access to treatment. Gov. Mark Warner has one good reason to veto the methadone clinic bill that lawmakers sent him this year: It is so restrictive, it probably violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. Warner has 213 better reasons for a veto: 213 drug deaths in Western Virginia last year alone. The region is in the midst of a prescription drug abuse epidemic that shows no sign of abating. Western Virginia needs more treatment options for drug addicts, not fewer. Yet SB 607 would bar new methadone maintenance clinics within a half-mile of schools or day-care centers. Why? Let's see. Virginia localities with methadone clinics report no major problems, so that can't be it. Addicts on methadone maintenance commit fewer crimes, so that argues against the bill. Constituents are afraid. Ah! There you have it. Constituents are afraid - of bringing addiction into neighborhoods where it often exists, hidden behind closed doors. Of exposing children to drug pushers of the stereotypical street variety, when the greater threat may lie in the medicine cabinet upstairs. Lawmakers listened to fears rather than reason. Both houses passed the bill by daunting, veto-proof margins. Warner may not like the odds against sustaining a veto. Were he to issue one, though, he would give lawmakers a chance to reconsider, and factor in far scarier numbers from the state medical examiner's office in Roanoke: - - Western Virginia's per-capita rate of fatal methadone overdoses - virtually all from doctor-prescribed pills rather than the liquid dispensed by maintenance clinics - is at least double the rate of New York City's. - - Those deaths totaled 85 last year, a 600 percent increase from just five years ago. - - The region's total of 213 drug deaths last year is 3 1/2 times the number just eight years ago. The governor and legislators should weigh the real toll of drug addiction against the imagined toll of methadone clinics, and scrap an ill-conceived effort to thwart the latter. - --- MAP posted-by: Josh