Murky methadone

To the Bangor City Council’s credit, it tried in its resolution on a referendum over a methadone clinic to present as broad a question as possible. But for reasons that are inescapable, the question is now so broad to be meaningless, no matter which way a vote goes.

The question approved last Wednesday by the council attaches three conditions to the city’s support of this treatment option for heroin and the abuse of other opiates. Actually, the referendum question doesn’t say “support,” it implies rather that Bangor officials won’t try to stand in the way if the following conditions are met:

. “local law enforcement has been given sufficient time to address the issue of opiate addiction through enforcement actions and education”;

. “a coordinated state policy on opiate addiction treatment is in place”;

. “all questions which have been raised about the presence and operation of such a clinic in Bangor are fully addressed and answered.”

If you were a city official trying to pry answers out of reluctant state officials, these conditions would be a good way to get their attention. But as a referendum question, they are ineffective because, in the first condition, what sufficient means isn’t defined, nor is it stated who would determine when that unknown level had been achieved. The second condition comes about five years after the state set out a policy supporting methadone as a treatment option, although the word “coordinated” makes this section a little tricky – it doesn’t say coordinated with whom. You might suppose that whoever wasn’t included in the coordination could conclude that this portion had not been met.

The third condition would make Bangor look like Congress during filibuster season. All questions … fully addressed? That’s an impossible standard, as a parent of any 5-year-old can attest.

The council found itself with this referendum because it tried to be responsive to community concern about methadone, and in rejecting a more straightforward yes-or-no question on this treatment option felt it had to respond somehow. But in trying to frame a responsible statement, it ran into the same problems it had with the original question – the use of specific medical procedures are better left to doctors and other health care experts, rather than to popular vote; the city has no actual authority over the placement of a clinic; an investigation into methadone, through a committee on which council members sit, isn’t expected to be finished until a month after the vote.

One positive effect of the council’s decision is that both sides seem partly satisfied by the compromise, so that city-Eastern Maine Healthcare committee has a better chance of being more productive. At least it does until after the November election, when residents who thought their vote on the referendum would make a difference find themselves disappointed.