NORWAY – In January, Norway and Paris will give residents the option of extending the current ban on methadone clinics another six months. Oxford, too, will be revisiting the issue in early 2006.
The three towns first passed moratoriums on methadone clinics last summer to halt any immediate development and give the towns time to develop strategies to better control the clinics.
Methadone is used to treat addictions to opiates such as heroin or OxyContin.
In the past several months, officials from the three towns – including town managers, a planning board representative and police chiefs – have been meeting monthly to learn about methadone clinics and work on revising the towns’ site plan review standards.
Fergus Lea, a planner from Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, said Wednesday night after one of the regular meetings that modifying some standards for proposed developments will give towns tighter control and “provide the Planning Board the opportunity to ensure that development doesn’t affect the health, safety and welfare of citizens.”
He said this goal has not yet been accomplished, making it necessary to extend the moratoriums. After the group learned that its powers to manage substance-abuse clinics was limited by the Americans with Disability Act, it focused on drafting new state legislation. The proposed bill would have provided the state with more control over the licensing process and also given towns more input, Lea said. But this bill was passed over by the state Legislature recently.
Lea also said a lawyer has advised the town to wait for the resolution of a federal lawsuit between a methadone clinic and the town of Rockland.
In the next six months, Lea said the group will continue working on the site review standards, looking at issues like security, location, parking, lighting and traffic. The clinics cannot be outright banned.
Opponents to methadone clinics claim the treatment could lead to abuse of the drug and more overdose deaths.
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