FLORIDA HINDERS HELP FOR ADDICTION
State ignored need for more methadone clinics, made questionable decisions about licensing.
Nothing about Nancy Noonan’s adult life had been easy. Coming home from her job on one New Year’s Eve, the 5-foot-tall waitress had been brutally assaulted, beaten so badly her mother had trouble recognizing her.
Her husband died. She developed a drinking problem.
But she did get help at a state-financed rehab center in Miami.
Years later, she turned to heroin and sought help there again. It had shut down, her mother said. Noonan resorted to methadone.
The oldest medical treatment for addiction to heroin and powerful prescription opioids, methadone curbs cravings without generating highs. It paves the way for users to lead normal lives. It is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines.
Newer treatments for opioid addiction were available when Noonan was seeking help. Vivitrol was one. So was Buprenorphine.
But Vivitrol was not widely available, state health officials acknowledged in 2012. Buprenorphine required expensive doctors’ visits as well as prescriptions. For someone whose addiction had robbed them of steady work, insurance and money, those drugs could be out of reach.
That left methadone.
Only state-approved clinics can dispense methadone to treat addiction.
Yet Florida’s Department of Children and Families stopped licensing new methadone clinics for four years between
Florida fell short of meeting the methadone needs its own experts recommended as opioids claimed lives. For three of these years, the state cannot locate a copy of its annual report identifying need.