This is in response to the article about opening a new methadone clinic in Lewiston.

What are people thinking — supplying drugs to addicts? The article stated the homeless rate has gone down since these clinics have started; well, of course they have. Rent is affordable when an addict’s drugs are paid for by someone else.

I am truly disgusted with this situation.

What happened to counseling and therapy?

The part the public does not hear is the part where addicts get to bring a supply home for the week after they are preferred customers and sell it for the drug they prefer to use — many never getting caught.

Or women getting pregnant and the dosage getting upped so they can deliver an addict baby which taxes pay to ween the child off the methadone.

Methadone is not a cure. Notice that these clinics don’t state that people have a drug-free prognosis in their future. Instead, new clinics are opened for the rising numbers of addicts utilizing this legal way to use drugs.

In the case of prescription drug addiction, I think getting help is a private matter between patient and doctor, not a clinic that substitutes one drug addiction for another.

What have we lowered ourselves to when instead of supplying help to drug addicts, we are supplying drugs?

Jennifer Lamarre, Lisbon Falls

Editor’s note: According to Merrimack River Medical Services, which operates a methadone clinic in Portland, a pregnant woman’s methadone dose may need to be increased as the pregnancy progresses since the woman’s metabolism changes. There is, however, no relationship between the strength of the dosage and the severity of a baby’s withdrawal symptoms. Also, some preferred customers may be permitted to take home up to six days’ worth of doses, but the take-home is regulated and the client must submit to random testing to prove he/she is taking the prescribed dose. Anyone who diverts their methadone dose is subject to criminal charges.