The mother of a teen who died of a methadone overdose and the leader of an organization that helps people with addictions are raising questions about the province's methadone program.
Michelle Mitchum, whose son Colton died after taking methadone that wasn't prescribed to him, is calling on the province to do more to ensure the powerful drug doesn't end up in the wrong hands.
"I am trying to get some changes made so this doesn't happen to someone else's child," Mitchum said.
Mitchum said she has been angry since Colton, 16, died seven months ago, but she's trying to turn that anger into action.
Methadone is used to try to wean people off serious drug addictions — some people use it indefinitely to keep them off drugs such as OxyContin or heroin.
Mitchum is scheduled to make a presentation to a provincial government round table on methadone in St. John's Thursday.
Ron Fitzpatrick, the executive director of Turnings — a program that helps people who've been released from prison, said the province needs to expand the methadone treatment program by finding more doctors willing to offer the drug.
Fitzpatrick said denying recovering addicts methadone will compel some of them to commit crimes to get drugs.
He said more access to methadone will keep communities safer.
So there you Have it.
Her Son uses methadone illegally and now his mother wants 'something to be done'.
And who could blame her, If this were my kid I'd be angry too and I'd want changes too. I would appeal heavily to emotion.
But what exactly could be done? Pharmacists already have ways to make sure patients don't hold their methadone in their mouth, or sneak it out in a vessel of some sort. People with take-home doses have them because they are trusted and their urine is tested, so a lack of methadone metabolites would show.
Under the current approach, I think that the only things left to do are to inconvenience those with take-home doses - and heavily monitor the pharmacists filling the prescriptions (pharmacists have a higher than average tendency to become addicts, and methadone has a street value of $1 per milligram; so there is a tempting profit motive). Anyhow, new security measures would result in longer wait times and would seriously disrupt the lives of those people who are in the late stages of recovery and who are working steady jobs. It would also inevitably result in less taxes being paid and more people on the dole.
Frankly there would be a whole lot of suffering and for not much more than the short feel-good moment that comes with realizing that things have been made even more difficult for those people. It just is not worth it.
Drugs don't kill people anymore than pencils cause spelling errors or cameras cause child porno. If someone dies as a result of their abuse of drugs then it is because they killed themselves, even if they did so unintentionally. Now if this kid died as a result of misjudging the dosage - or being told it was a lower dose than it was - then that is largely as due to how methadone is distributed, in diluted liquid form. If some other mode of delivery, such as uninjectable pill-form methadone became available, this would reduce the ability of pharmacy staff to commit theft and would ensure that in those inevitable instances where the drugs make it to the hands of drug abusers, that at least those drug abusers would know the dose of the pill; just as they know the doses for the other opiates they abuse.
It is so simple... That the distribution of methadone in pill-form has not already been implemented leads me to think someone likes to make things difficult for those people.
That young man might still be alive had methadone been distributed in non-injectable pillform. But it isn't and he's gone and the buck always stops somewhere. If she accomplishes nothing else, I hope his mother finds out who that is.
My heart goes out to her.
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