NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) NEVER ENDS
This time it's Greensburg Salem, Pa, where an elementary school board voted 9-0 to object to a proposed methadone clinic that would operate a quarter-mile away. Fear was expressed that the facility would "pose a serious danger to students, employees and others," and place at risk "students [who] would be walking past the clinic or driving by it with their parents." It's difficult to comprehend just what the basis is for the near-universal revulsion of methadone treatment facilities, especially since there appears never to have been any news report, from anywhere in the nation, of harm having come to schools as a result of methadone clinics or their patients. Full story: Tribune-Review (Greensburg, PA, Nov. 9)
posted by RGNewman, MD @ 4:56 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Don't they realize it's the users waiting to get into that new program they should be worried about and not the up and coming patients?????
Being a Methadone patient at a large 900+ in philadelphia clinic, (which happens to be less than a block away from a charter school) that there is increased drug sales, violence and open drug use as a direct result of the clinic. Even at the bus stop miles away where most of the clinic's patients catch the bus to the clinic from other Septa routes like the El is there drug dealing almost exclusively by / for the patients.
With drug users dealing drugs outside of clinics that are near schools then everyone should be worried about the up and comming patients.
There are a lot of young messed up teens out there that would jump at taking drugs unfortunately. Adding to the problem is not helping them or the communities.
People are missing the point completely. Why should there be "clinics" in the 1st place? Why is methadone dispensed differently than any other drug? Insane asylums are now gone and so will these so called "clinics", but probably not in my lifetime, but only when certain drugs are legalized.
Anonymous is correct in pointng out that the NIMBY discussion overlooks what is the real issue: why should methadone, of all the medications in the entire US pharmacopoeia, be limited to adminoistration in a "clinic"? Why indeed!!?? It's even more irraitonal when one considers that methadone - the same methadone - may be prescribed to any patient by any physician with a regular DEA registration if it's for pain - and this is true even if the pain patient is known to be an active opiate user. Go figure! RNewmanMD
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