By Kelly Morgan,Staff Writer

Some would like to see alternatives to methadone made available.

For Dr. Robert Dana at the University of Maine, an addictive behavior specialist who once worked as a researcher and treatment provider, methadone should be a last resort. He’s opposed to building more clinics.

“My biggest problem with methadone in a state like Maine is that if you default to it, then what happens is you don’t do any serious prevention,” he said.

Methadone has been proven to decrease drug use, Dana said, but many patients use alcohol and other drugs while in treatment, and are likely to go back to opiate abuse at some point.

Buprenorphine, an opioid with a lower risk of abuse, addiction or side effects, is an alternative medication that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It is considered to be as effective as moderate doses of methadone.

Doctors can prescribe buprenorphine for treatment of opiate addiction after receiving special training. But under federal law, doctors cannot prescribe methadone for opiate addiction. It can only be dispensed through licensed clinics for that purpose.

Buprenorphine has been particularly successful for younger patients who have not abused opiates for long, said Dr. Mark Publicker of the Mercy Recovery Center in Westbrook.

He is one of 114 Maine doctors permitted to prescribe buprenorphine for opiate or opioid addiction, but he is frustrated by a federal limitation that keeps him from treating more than 30 patients at a time.

“I’m turning away an average of 10 to 15 people a week who are desperate for treatment,” he said shortly before taking a trip to Washington to lobby Maine’s senators in an effort to get patient limitations lifted. “This is a children’s disease in this state. We’re treating 13-, 14-, 15-, 16-, 19-year-olds.”

With thousands of Mainers addicted to opiates and opioids such as heroin and OxyContin, it will take more than a few more methadone clinics to make treatment widely available, Publicker said.

“Add another methadone clinic and you’ve probably added another 500 for treatment, but we’re talking 20,000 who need it.”