Methadone license rush led to campout in front of DCF

TALLAHASSEE — Florida officials’ first-come, first-served system for dozens of new methadone-treatment licenses resulted in applicants camping out in tents with sleeping bags, coolers and, in one case, a gun, to be first in line.

Pictures of applicants lounging in chairs outside the Department of Children and Families headquarters in Tallahassee are among the documents filed by methadone-treatment providers in a challenge to an emergency rule that resulted in the type of crowd usually associated with lining up for tickets to a concert or a major sporting event.

Instead, the people camped out were vying to be first in line as workers at the state agency unlocked the doors at 8 a.m. Oct. 2, when the application period for the methadone-treatment licenses opened.

Three nonprofit treatment providers who lost out on getting some of 49 new licenses are arguing, in an administrative challenge filed Dec. 11, that the Department of Children and Families wrongly created an emergency rule that is unfair to potential vendors and could leave low-income drug addicts in the lurch. At least 16 other providers are expected to join the challenge.

Representatives of two of the treatment providers saw the line outside the agency when they went to check on the address the day before the application period opened, lawyers for Operation Par, Inc., DACCO Behavioral Health, Inc., and Aspire Health Partners, Inc., wrote in the 38-page petition.

“Some individuals had arrived days earlier and were camping outside the department offices in tents, with portable chairs, sleeping bags, and coolers stocked with provisions,” the lawyers wrote.

At least one of the people in line was armed, “ostensibly to protect their spot in line,” according to the court filing.

Florida officials this summer decided to double the number of methadone clinics in the state as part of a $27 million federal grant aimed at curbing opioid addiction and overdoses.

In August, the Department of Children and Families issued an emergency rule aimed at expediting the new licenses. It gave providers the ability to submit applications for licenses on a “firstcome, first-served” basis.

That prompted the campout in front of the agency’s headquarters.