"Cannabis Common Sense" 2004

Note: Video links will be added to this page, so that visitors may access video episodes of "Cannabis Common Sense" with Don DuPay featured in them, in the weeks to come...

                    METHADONE: THE GOOD, BAD AND THE UGLY

Originally prepared for cable television's program, "Cannabis Common Sense",

this editorial was broadcast 4-23-2004                               

                    If there is a Methadone clinic in your neighborhood, you know it!

        Always controversial, the Methadone program designed to give Heroin addicts the way to a life free of crime, and a way of returning to employability, has been in Portland since about 1975.

        I can remember a bunch of us detectives sitting around discussing the concept of selling cheap methadone to Heroin addicts so they don't have to steal and rob anymore. I was amused that these old timer cops, puffing on cigars and cigarettes couldn't understand why Heroin addicts couldn't quit their habit. Somehow its always the other guy's addiction that's the problem. “I'm OK. It's you that drinks and smokes too much.” Now, with about 37 years experience with methadone, has the program worked?

        On a scale of 1-10 I'd say it's a 7. (My personal opinion) because it has returned thousands of hopeless Heroin junkies to employability which lowers the crime rate and returns them to being tax payers, certainly something the government wants. That is a profound good because having a job is vitally important to a person's self worth. Not having a job, being addicted to Heroin and having to be a criminal just to get well, is as disgusting to the victim as it must be to you. For many a daily dose of Methadone brings a paycheck, allows folks to be parents, again, to be productive citizens. All good from Methadone treatment or methadone maintenance.

        What then could possible be wrong with the program? Early methadone patients could fill their daily dose prescription at a drug store at a time of day convenient to their lives. The drug store kept the doses in a locked box and served the customers that appeared. I'm not sure why that changed but part of what is wrong with methadone program is the way it is dispensed.

        All patients must appear at the clinic between 5am and usually 10am to line up for their dose. It is a 5 hour morning window. What if the patient works swing shirt and needs to sleep in until say 11am. Tough, says the clinic. You know our hours. Be there!!

        Requiring all patients to line up at a certain time and be served from the trough, makes the clinic a dispenatorium (my word) and there are lines. I've seen lines of patients out the front door and down the block. It stigmatizes them and destroys their anonymity. I didn't know I had co-workers that were on methadone until I saw them standing in line at a clinic.

        Although many methadone patients are serious about their recovery many are not and continue to use or chippy on top of their dose. Being forced to go to the dispensatorium puts those that are serious in daily contact with the people and lifestyle they re trying to avoid. It is counter productive.

        Methadone is big business! If for instance, a clinic has 100 clients (addicts) and each client pays $300.00 a month, that is $30,000. That IS big business But it's a Dope business with its own problems.

        As methadone clinics are only open “part time” most employees have jobs elsewhere. That leads to a “part time” mentality when many clients need full time attention. I lived with a woman for ten years that took methadone every day, a woman in her fifties. I learned from her that clinics often have unrealistic expectations of clients. Many clients have Hep C from shooting dope, yet Marijuana is forbidden or seriously discouraged, the one thing that gives relief from nausea and encourages appetite.

        Attending group therapy before allowing a client to receive their dose is also unrealistic. Many clients such as my companion of many years said, “How many more groups do I have to attend? At what point does the clinic realize that my addiction IS my way of life. I don't want to change. I won't change. Take your tired old groups, crap and lies I've heard in sessions for years and stick it.”

        This is the attitude of hundreds of methadone clients. “I take my methadone, I work my job. That is my case plan, leave me alone.” A 25-year-old college graduate in social work, up against a addict of 30 years has unrealistic expectations.

        Now let's talk about the ugly, the black market in methadone. Every week end most methadone patients get one or two doses to take home. Too much of it is sold for cash or traded for something else of value on the street. Why is so much methadone as well as benzodiazpines, (Klonipin, Lorazapam etc) sold illegally? Are these folks hopeless criminals imbued with a criminal gene or something? Whose fault is it anyway?

        I don't think fault has much to do with it as it is mostly a phenomenon of economics. Many methadone patients are on a forced low income of $800.00 or less a month in Social Security disability. What would you do if your total income this month was $800.00? How soon would you be broke? A day after pay day? Two days after pay day or after you paid your rent? What would you do when you were broke? Perhaps pawn your jewelry if you have any? When that money is gone then what? Perhaps have a garage sale and get rid of some more stuff. Then what when all your assets are gone? Rummage through dumpsters for beer cans and bottles, or sell your body...or sell your methadone dose or part of it for cash, or sell your pills? You know you won't be real sick until you can get more at the clinic on Monday. You can make it!

        These are all bad choices but real choices faced by people that never have enough money because the government keeps them at below poverty level! Perhaps a government that keeps its weakest citizens at below poverty level income is using that population as cannon fodder for the war on drugs, a way of keeping the prison industry and law enforcement employed.

                    Methadone is all of these things, Good...Bad...and Ugly!

By Don DuPay

ABSOLUTELY NO PORTION OF THIS TELEVISED OR WRITTEN EDITORIAL MAY BE REPRODUCED OR DISSEMINATED WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR, DONALD LEE DUPAY, UNDER PENALTY OF COPYRIGHT LAWS!!