Plans for a meth clinic in Bustleton 3
Feb19
By Shannon McDonald
Northeast Treatment Centers wants to open a methadone clinic 
at Grant and the Boulevard in Bustleton.
If all goes as planned, NET will open the clinic in April in the old MRI buliding, which will serve up to 300 meth addicts every day. City Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez thinks the addicts – and the community – would be better served if those who needed help could get treatment in hospitals.
Many residents are concerned about the effects the clinic could have in the neighborhood, especially given the problems other neighborhood, like Frankford are battling.
NET members will hold a community meeting tonight at the Anne Frank School at Clark and Lott streets, during which time residents can voice their concerns.
I think it is wonderful that you may soon have a local methadone treatment center.
Please keep in mind that abstinence programs attract very much the same people as a methadone clinic. It is important to have the choice in your community. Some people need methadone to stop.
You will be helping all sorts of people from all walks of life.
You will be helping:
mothers who are addicted to pain pills.
the business person who leaves town every week or so often to buy drugs.
the lawyer who has become expert at getting drugs from several doctors.
the son or daughter sneaking pain pills out of your medicine cabinet or grandma’s cabinet.
and others who are seeking relief from the ravages of opiate addiction.
You will be adding a local choice for opiate recovery to the already existing abstainence programs.
Both programs have value.
Abstinence meetings really do help a lot of addicts in recovery. It is wonderful when they have a nearby clinic to refer an opiate addict for medically assisted treatment because sometimes the abstinence program is just not going to work for that struggling opiate addict. They know that this is a chronic relapsing disease and often, a person needs the help of a proven medication for either taper or for maintenance. Someone there might suggest it and save a life and a family.
I think how amazing it is to think there are persons in 12 step recovery with great faith in their abstinence program who will wonderfully suggest that a suffering opiate addict may need Medical Assisted Treatment. Because of their rules, 12 Step groups do not take a public stance pro or con for a clinic. Their focus is on addiction just like a clinic’s focus. I like to think that there are some members who know that a good clinic nearby can save lives and give a normal life back to a person who chooses to use the Medically Assisted Treatment route.
I like to think that clinics will suggest an abstinence program for those who are tapering because the relapse ratio is so high.
I remember many years ago when I was told by an abstinence program member that he had sent a suffering opiate addict to a clinic because that was what he needed. What a wonderful thing to do. I like to think there are others who are quietly doing the same as he did so many years ago.
Like abstinence, a methadone clinic is another effective tool in the fight against the disease of opiate addiction.
Please, welcome a methadone clinic into your community. Give a lot more people a good chance at recovery through MAT.
Kallie Hannu has been in and out of the legal system since the age of 13.
On Thursday, the now 28-year-old Hannu tearfully approached the Beltrami County Board with pictures of her children, pleading for the future of the drug clinic that has kept her clean for the past year and a half.
See rest of article…
http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/articles/index.cfm?id=21620§ion=news
[...] discuss the Roosevelt Boulevard Safety Project and plans to replace Pennypack Circle, as well as the proposed Methadone Clinic and other neighborhood [...]