MACHIAS – Washington County is still awaiting word on whether it will receive a $1.2 million federal grant to address an epidemic of opiate abuse, but there was some good news last week.

Intensive outpatient counseling for the county’s growing population of heroin and prescription drug addicts should be available in Machias by May 1, according to Carol Carew, acting chief executive officer for Health Ways Regional Medical Center at Lubec.

The Lubec center will administer the $100,000 state grant for intensive individual and group counseling, one component of a treatment program that is expected to include replacement drug therapy, Carew said.

Funding for the entire program – including methadone therapy for the most severe of Washington County’s estimated 600 opiate addicts – depends on a $1.2 million grant from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The Washington County commissioners applied for that grant last fall, but Carew said a decision on the application wasn’t expected until June or July.

Carew said Lubec medical center received word last week that the federal government had approved a $149,975 planning grant for the replacement drug therapy. The center is hiring a director to work with medical personnel and social service providers in Machias and Calais to implement the program, she said.

The state and federal funds are coming to a county that has been decimated by the abuse of prescription drugs such as OxyContin and Dilaudid.

Those addicted to the powerful prescription painkillers have included newborns, according to the Maine Department of Human Services.

DHS official Newell Auger said that in the past two years, 10 Washington County newborns have come into DHS custody as a result of chemical dependency.

Auger said five of those babies were born dependent on OxyContin or Dilaudid. The other five came into DHS custody because a parent was addicted to prescription narcotics, he said.

The 10 babies represent 10.7 percent of all children who came into DHS custody in Washington County during the past two years, he said. Statewide, the average for children who come into DHS custody at birth as a result of chemical dependency is roughly 5 percent, he said.

Auger said that figure isn’t exact because DHS doesn’t keep statistics on chemical dependency in the agency’s caseload and the figures are based on interviews with DHS casework supervisors for each county.

Nancy Green, a certified nurse midwife from Calais and president of Neighbors Against Drug Abuse, said she believes the number of Washington County babies that are born addicted to prescription narcotics is higher than DHS records indicate.

DHS doesn’t have jurisdiction over members of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, and, as a result, the department’s figures don’t reflect addicted American Indian mothers and babies, Green said.

Marjorie Withers, a mental health consultant for the Indian Township Health Center, said Sunday that Passamaquoddy child protective services removed two newborns from their mothers in the last year because the babies were born addicted and began suffering from withdrawal within 24 hours of birth. Withers said she doesn’t know the figures for the reservation at Pleasant Point.

Green said 13 of the 40 patients she saw between March 2001 and March 2002 were addicted to OxyContin or Dilaudid. Four of the mothers continued to use the drugs throughout their pregnancy. Their babies tested positive for opiates and were going through withdrawal after birth, she said.

Those babies were removed from their mothers by DHS, she said.

Green said six of the mothers no longer were using drugs when their babies were born and another three delivered their children in Portland where they were being treated with methadone because they were unable to stop using.

Methadone is the only safe replacement drug therapy for pregnant women addicted to prescription narcotics, she said.

At the invitation of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, Green testified about Washington County’s prescription drug epidemic before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in February.

The number of newborns removed at birth as a result of chemical dependency is dwarfed by the number of parents who lose older children when addiction leaves them incapable of caring for the children.

In interviews conducted by the Bangor Daily News during the spring of 2000, Washington County lawyers, substance abuse counselors and 4th District Court Judge John Romei spoke of the scores of young mothers who had lost their children because of prescription drug abuse.

One of those counselors, Karen Barbee, said a client told her with great shame how she would lock herself in a bathroom and “shoot up” as her children pounded on the door, crying.

Washington County’s problems with prescription drug abuse have received extensive media coverage and now are known nationwide.

With the exception of adult drug court, an intensive court supervision of addicts convicted of drug-related crime, no program has addressed the county’s problem until now.

The intensive outpatient counseling that the Regional Medical Center at Lubec will begin in May and the hoped-for drug replacement therapy that could begin this summer are part of a countywide plan developed by a broad-based commission that the health center convened in the fall of 2000.

Green and her organization were involved in the drug treatment planning, which resulted in application for the federal funds.

Carew said Friday that the intensive outpatient counseling was to be funded under the federal grant, but the Maine Office of Substance Abuse found the $100,000 for the program because the state understood that Washington County needed the money now.