Questions linger for methadone clinic panel

BANGOR – Don’t expect any easy answers in the debate over a proposed methadone clinic here, members of the city’s Special Committee on Opiate Addiction said last week.

With a mid-December deadline looming for the committee to finish its report, reaching a consensus on the necessity for the treatment and the clinic’s potential impact on the community might be difficult, say members, citing insufficient or conflicting data in those areas.

“We still have some outstanding questions, and I’m not sure if we’ll ever agree there are any answers,” Nichi Farnham, the committee’s chairwoman, said in a recent interview. “It might be hard to come to a consensus, but all we can do is hope we can influence the state a little on this.”

The committee will meet at 5 p.m. Tuesday in the City Council chambers at City Hall.

The six-member panel, comprising three members each from the City Council and Acadia Hospital, was formed after the hospital applied in February to operate a methadone clinic out of its Indiana Avenue facility.

Methadone is a synthetic narcotic used to wean heroin and opiate addicts off the dangerous drugs.

News of the clinic, proposed by the state Office of Substance Abuse, quickly sparked a debate in the community. Proponents defended the proven treatment’s 30-year history and opponents called the clinic a magnet for drug users and drug-related crime.

The committee has already agreed on the need for increased education, prevention and law enforcement efforts to combat the region’s significant opiate-addiction problem.

But the lack of hard and fast statistics regarding a clinic’s potential effect on a community and the likely availability of the less addictive alternative, buprenorphine, have further muddied the already troubled waters of the debate.

“Some of the tougher questions are coming ahead of us,” said Clif Eames, a member of the Acadia Hospital board of directors and the opiate committee. “But the spirit of goodwill and cooperation looks pretty good for a meaningful report coming out of this committee.”

The committee is charged with issuing a set of recommendations to the Maine Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services by Dec. 15.

In response to the committee’s formation, the agency that oversees the state’s two other methadone clinics – in Winslow and South Portland – agreed to delay the licensing of the Bangor clinic until January 2001.

Members from both the council and Acadia say the information received by the committee in the past three months has been helpful in answering many of the nearly 100 questions raised at earlier public hearings on the matter.

Nevertheless, one question remains on the minds of many Bangor residents.

“People want some definite answers about how it will affect the community,” Farnham said. “But there just doesn’t appear to be any good data for that.”

State officials have cited statistics suggesting that the addict population around the South Portland clinic has not changed since its opening five years ago – implying that addicts do not move into a community to seek the treatment.

City staff questioned those county-by-county percentages saying they did not apply to Bangor’s more rural location, where addicts would be forced to travel greater distances.

A clinic’s effect on a city’s crime rate has also been difficult to pinpoint, committee members said. Police in Winslow and South Portland offered no direct links between crime and the presence of a methadone clinic.

Clinic opponents say common sense suggests that methadone’s documented failure rate of 50 percent is a precursor to crime. They argue that those unsuccessful in treatment will resort to crimes such as burglary to support their drug habits.

While the clinic has drawn substantial fire from skeptical residents, the drug has also generated its own debate among treatment providers.

Some drug experts point to buprenorphine, which could be dispensed at a doctor’s office, as a less addictive alternative that will make the highly regulated methadone obsolete.

Buprenorphine, while promising, has yet to gain Food and Drug Administration approval, state officials contend. And even when approved, the drug would simply be another alternative and not a complete replacement for methadone, which would still be needed for severe addiction problems.