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OFFICIALS OPPOSE METHADONE CLINIC FOR DEKALB

FORT PAYNE - The State Health Planning and Development Agency has received an application for permission to open a methadone clinic in Fort Payne, but local officials oppose such a facility.

"We have no need for a methadone clinic in our community," District Attorney Mike O'Dell said.  "A methadone clinic would serve no useful purpose for our citizens, and could instead be very detrimental to our efforts to fight drug addiction."

Methadone is a synthetic narcotic that addicts must take daily as a substitute for heroin, morphine or other opiates.  It is not taken as a treatment for addiction to other drugs.

O'Dell said DeKalb County has a very small population of opiate addicts, and that a clinic would have to import clients from outside the county to make it a profitable enterprise.

Mayor Bill Jordan also opposes the proposed clinic for that reason.

"We don't need to be bringing in more drug problems than we have," Jordan said.  "We are preparing a letter of strong opposition to the clinic."

Brenda Heatherly, of the Cullman County Treatment Center, which operates a methadone clinic in Cullman, is listed as the applicant for the state certificate of need.  Heatherly could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

After Heatherly filed her application, the State Health Planning Agency notified authorities in DeKalb County and invited their comments.  Comments must be filed by May 31, after which the agency will schedule a public hearing on the application.

O'Dell cited records from the DeKalb County Court Referral Office that 13,972 drug tests were performed locally in the past year - for every court in the county, the Department of Human Resources, local employers, doctors, parents of juveniles and others.

There were 1,343 positive results, just less than 10 percent, and only 163, just more than 1 percent, of the positives were for opiates.  A large number of the positives for opiates were for prescribed medicines and not indicative of substance abuse, O'Dell said.

The Court Referral Office placed 175 people in residential treatment programs in the past year.  Only four of them had an opiate dependence, and none required a detoxification program, he said.

There are already three local outpatient treatment programs for alcohol and drug abuse, and local doctors would be able to serve the small number who might require methadone, O'Dell said.  There is a methadone clinic as close as Gadsden.

Methadone provided through a clinic can cost more than $300 a month, while a month's supply of methadone from a pharmacy, prescribed by a doctor, would cost about $20, O'Dell said.

Further, methadone has become a drug of abuse and is sold illegally on the street.  A recent report from Kentucky said that methadone was rapidly replacing OxyContin as the most abused prescription drug.

"Our methamphetamine epidemic is already taxing out law enforcement resources to capacity," O'Dell said.  "I can see no purpose in deliberately introducing another addictive substance into our community with the potential that methadone can bring."