Collegiate Times

By Michael Krawitz

regular columnist

?Issues of drug use have always been morally tinged by politics and social conceptions. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of addiction, an area that touches our deepest fears about our ability to manage ourselves, our children and our society,? said Stanton Peele of New York University.

What do German scientists in 1937, Virginia Legislators in 2005 and Blacksburg and Roanoke all have in common? Answer: polamidon. Polamidon is a substance that Max Bockm?hl and Gustav Ehrhart at I.G. Farbenindustrie discovered while searching for an analgesic that would be better in surgery and have a lower addiction potential than heroin. Polamidon is unrelated to opiates. Its withdrawal syndrome develops more slowly and is less severe but more prolonged than that associated with heroin withdrawal. In 1947, polamidon, now a spoil of war, was given to Eli Lilly who renamed it dolophine, for the French word Dolor [painful grief] and Fin [end] but you probably know it by it's other name, methadone.

The Virginia General Assembly feels that methadone is not regulated nearly enough by the "soft on drugs" Drug Enforcement Administration, so they have two bills sailing through the legislative process to tighten the noose around the necks of methadone clinics.

When I asked a legislative staffer if he was planning on tightening regulations on other medical clinics, he said no and said no one has asked for such control. This seemed odd to me since medical clinics dispense hundreds of drugs including what most people in the methadone program were previously addicted to, such as oxycodone.

Is methadone maintenance a legitimate medical treatment? According to the National Institutes of Health, "Methadone maintenance is effective in reducing illicit opiate drug use, in reducing crime, in enhancing social productivity and in reducing the spread of AIDS and hepatitis." What about the drug enforcement community? According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, "Methadone is very effective in helping individuals addicted to opiates stabilize their lives and reduce their illicit drug use."

But don't methadone clinics breed crime? Actually, no. Again, the NIH: "Over the past two decades, clear and convincing evidence has been collected from multiple studies showing that effective of opiate dependence markedly reduces the rates of criminal activity."

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