A state committee will likely vote today on whether to change the rules for licensing methadone clinics, a move that could give local communities a touch more control over the drug-treatment facilities, as well as place more regulatory burdens on the clinics.
The Committee on Health and Human Services originally was faced with a legislative bill proposed by officials from the Oxford Hills area. Local officials wanted to ensure greater state and local input over any methadone clinic that proposed moving into the area.
But the committee will probably turn that bill into a resolve, which according to a state legal analyst, makes more sense than passing a statute and has no less impact.
“One could read it as a statement that the committee trusts the department and considers the issue to be either very technical,” or a matter that the department needs to be able to respond to more quickly than legislation will allow, Jane Orbeton, the committee’s analyst said Monday, speaking about the regulatory agency, Maine’s Office of Substance Abuse.
Local officials watching this development are reservedly optimistic about the progress of the bill through the initial stages of lawmaking.
“We probably got a fairly good agreement on the things we were concerned about,” Norway Planning Board Chairman Dennis Gray said Monday. “We did drop a few things we put in the earlier bill.”
Fergus Lea, a planner with Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, who has been working with Paris, Norway and Oxford to draft the proposed legislation, said Monday that the Oxford Hills group agreed that if the Office of Substance Abuse addressed certain critical points, like mandating a local advisory board with public officials to help oversee clinics, it would not push for more physician oversight and additional security at the clinics.
Methadone clinics dispense methadone as a treatment for people addicted to drugs like heroin and OxyContin. Local officials drafted the proposed bill after a for-profit business called Discovery House started investigating this area as a possible clinic site, raising alarm in the communities. Some fear that the clinics could create more crime and drug trafficking. Supporters say the centers help addicts stabilize wrecked lives.
Kim Johnson, director of the Office of Substance Abuse, said she needs to balance local concerns about methadone treatment and drug abuse with the need to dispense health care.
“The things we’ve negotiated are reasonable,” she said, although some of what the Oxford Hills group suggested was already being addressed by the Office of Substance Abuse, she added.
But she said that the resolutions, if they are adopted, “will add a greater regulatory burden to the clinic, and whether or not that is a good or bad thing depends on your perspective.”
She said there is a need for more clinics in Lewiston-Auburn or Augusta, the Midcoast, and southern Maine. Currently, six clinics operate in Maine, with another slated to open in Rockland in the spring.
The points where the Oxford Hills group agreed with the Office of Substance Abuse include devising a method to get public comment on licensing renewals, giving patients more intensive counseling in the early stages of treatment, and establishing a need-based criteria for granting a license, Orbeton said.
If the committee recommends these rules, the resolve will be voted on by the state Legislature.
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