Methadone saves lives, and thwarting plans to open a clinic in West Baltimore would be a death sentence for those struggling with addiction.
The Baltimore Banner recently reported that residents near a prospective methadone clinic have waged a battle to block its opening. They question why the clinic must be in their neighborhood — all while admitting the real reason is that the patients seeking critical care are an eyesore.
“I don’t want to say, ‘those people,’” one resident said. “I don’t want people coming from there, falling on my mother’s law.”
This response, though ill-informed and morally bankrupt, is not uncommon. All the more reason it should be met with facts.
Methadone is a synthetic opioid agonist used to treat opioid use disorder. It has been around for nearly a century, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that it was prescribed as a maintenance medication for opioid addiction.
It is a full opioid agonist, unlike buprenorphine, and studies have repeatedly shown it to be incredibly effective.
“A comprehensive Cochrane review in 2009 compared methadone-based treatment (methadone plus psychosocial treatment) to placebo with psychosocial treatment and found that methadone treatment was effective in reducing opioid use, opioid use-associated transmission of infectious disease, and crime,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The same study cited by NIDA shows that methadone “significantly” improves health outcomes, regardless of whether the patient seeks counseling.
With the facts laid bare, it is nonsensical to oppose the medication on logical grounds — particularly in Baltimore, which has the highest overdose death rate of any city in the nation.
The clinic’s location in the city, however, was also questioned.
“If it didn’t have addiction services with it, we probably wouldn’t have a problem with it,” the same resident told the Baltimore City Planning Commission. “If it’s such a great idea, put it where your mother lives.”
The Banner’s article floats locations such as Roland Park and Pikesville as possible alternatives, but local overdose data provides a rationale for the choice of location.
West Baltimore is an overdose hotspot in the city, as is most of Baltimore’s “Black Butterfly,” according to geographical data obtained by The Long Haul.
It would make sense, then, that a clinic would be placed there instead of a well-off area such as Roland Park.
These clinics are a vital aspect of local harm reduction efforts, as federal regulations prevent methadone from being picked up at a pharmacy like normal medications.
Patients must visit a brick-and-mortar clinic to receive their doses and, although take-home doses became more common during the COVID-19 pandemic, barriers to access remain aplenty.
If anything, Baltimore has an insufficient number of clinics. In a city of about 570,000 people, there were just 32 methadone clinics in Baltimore as of 2019, according to an article by The Baltimore Sun.
The real issue at hand is the fact that clinics are viewed through a lens predicated on a hostile stigma attached to those struggling with addiction.
That mindset is embodied by those subscribing to the “not in my backyard,” or NIMBY, worldview. They oppose investments in such developments not because they directly hurt them, but because the patients make them uncomfortable.
In this case, they are perpetuating harmful prejudice that paints addicts as undesirable, subhuman beings.
Those prescribed methadone already receive enough judgment; in the recovery community, for example, they sometimes aren’t deemed “truly sober” because they take maintenance medications.
At the end of the day, they are still trying to recover — and that’s all that matters.
As for their impact on the neighborhood?
I’m sure you’d rather have patients lining up for medication than corpses lying on the sidewalk because of a preventable overdose.
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