NIMBY WINS BUT WHY?

From Taunton , MA: the local zoning board sided with “overwhelming public sentiment” and denied permission for the establishment of a methadone clinic because the proposed site is 1,000 feet (roughly 4 blocks) from an elementary school. When told that another methadone clinic in Brockton, 17 miles from Taunton, had been operating without incident across the street from an elementary school a zoning board member is quoted as saying, “I don’t care…” Even those of us who have seen these fears expressed for decades must still wonder just what it is that opponents fear patients receiving methadone (or perhaps those who provide it) will do to the elementary school kids, and what evidence there is that in the past 40-plus years any school kid has been harmed, anywhere in the country, by the neighborhood presence of a methadone treatment facility.
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