PARIS – Methadone clinics may soon be treated like adult entertainment businesses in Norway, Oxford and Paris if the towns create special ordinances to regulate where they may be built.
Fergus Lea, planning division director for the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, on Wednesday told officials from the three communities that an ordinance similar to those regulating businesses selling X-rated materials may be the best way to go.
“Often an adult business has a stand-alone ordinance and it says they can’t be within certain distances of certain uses.”
Lea explained that the towns may be able to create ordinances that would limit how close a methadone clinic may be built to a school or church. It may be harder to limit how close a clinic is placed to a residential area. “In our community there is the potential if the radius was too big around residential housing, it could exclude a clinic totally,” Lea said.
Towns would not, under state law, be allowed to place an outright ban on the treatment facilities.
Wednesday morning’s joint meeting at the Paris Fire Station was the third since area police chiefs have been contacted by representatives from Discovery House. The Rhode Island-based company operates drug addiction treatment facilities in Indiana, Maine, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Utah, according to its Web site. Methadone commonly is used to control addictions to opiates such as heroin in two ways: The methadone makes it difficult for a heroin addict to get high even if they shoot up, and it relieves the severe cravings for the drug.
In June and July, voters in Norway, Paris and Oxford adopted temporary moratoriums on methadone clinics, banning the facilities until each community can enact new ordinances to regulate their location, and possibly some of their operating procedures.
Lea said Wednesday he has been consulting with two municipal law attorneys from the Eaton Peabody Bradford & Veague law firm in Brunswick.
The possibility of requiring police or security guard presence at any clinic site was discussed.
Lea said the attorneys he consulted could not immediately answer questions about whether the towns can create licensing regulations for the treatment centers, or whether the state already licenses such facilities.
According to Bill Lowenstein, associate director of the Maine Office of Substance Abuse, all methadone clinics are required to have state licenses and are regulated by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, the state’s Board of Pharmacy and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
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