Drug Treatment Tourism Isn’t The Type Of Tourism We Had In Mind
Drug treatment centers, colloquially known as methadone clinics, have popped up across northwest Georgia. The clinics have a purpose: to treat those with a drug dependency of heroin and other opioids by treating with methadone. Methadone replaces the drug the person is dependent on and is seen as an effective treatment. It’s also a controversial treatment. I’m not a doctor, so I won’t speak to the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the treatment. If there are any doctors in the house, feel free to opine in the comments.
That’s not really the issue. The issue is the number of, as an AP article that discusses this matter, “tourists” that these clinics bring to north Georgia. According to the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, one in five people treated at a Georgia methadone clinic last year was out of state. In the same time frame, every two out of three people who visited these clinics in northwest Georgia were from out of state.
Why so many? Stricter regulations in Tennessee and relaxed regulations in Georgia have created an environment for these privately-owned clinics to pop up near the Georgia-Tennessee border. There is concern with criminal activity, although, the Baltimore Sun published an article five years ago that speaks to the contrary, around these clinics, and there are concerns about people driving back to their home (sometimes hours away) after receiving treatment.
Residents of northwest Georgia complained about the number of clinics opening in people’s proverbial backyards. The complaints were loud enough that Senator Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga) dropped SB 88 which would establish licensing requirements for these clinics. The regulation would require a certificate of need to be obtained by the clinic in a region for it to operate. The bill, passed by the legislature earlier this year, was signed by Governor Nathan Deal just a few minutes ago today. Senator Mullis stated, in the AP article, that the northwest Georgia region would be at-capacity when the law takes effect.
It’s not the clinics themselves that are problematic, but rather the distribution. Georgia has 71 clinics, making our state number one in the number of treatment centers. Florida, with twice the population, has 69. Other states have fewer. In fact, according to the AP, about a dozen states have less than 10 treatment centers. Georgia is feeling the effects of a national issue where access to these centers can be limited.
There is still a stigma around these treatment centers, and more information about the purpose and success rates of these types of clinics are probably needed. However, Georgia looks to tamp the growth of drug treatment centers for now.
About Author
nsmith
Father. IT Geek. Former 14th District GOP Chairman (2015-2017). Former Walker GOP Chairman (2009-2013). Resident of Chamblee. American. Georgian. Conservative.
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We have methadone treatment centers all day long in north Georgia. More than we can handle.
But try to get treatment for cocaine addiction or alcoholism in metro Atlanta. There’s a profound shortage of in-patient treatment beds here. The result … guys like Basil Eleby go untreated for a decade, damaging themselves, damaging the quality of life in their communities (and occasionally burning down an interstate highway.)
The standard response on the right has been to simply lock them up. But that costs society less than treatment. It costs roughly $30,000 a year to incarcerate someone, and that doesn’t account for additional costs that untreated mentally ill and substance addicted people impose on communities (like the repair bill for burning down an interstate highway.) It’s something like $15,000 for a treatment bed and permanently-supportive housing in the Housing First model.
No, I’m not letting GDOT off the hook for leaving the insulation under the bridge.
The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities is deeply underfunded and the legislature is playing political games with who gets help. To put it bluntly, a white heroin addict from north Georgia who moved from Oxycontin to smack gets treatment. A black crack addict on Piedmont Road does not. Somehow, heroin is viewed as a disease while crack cocaine or “urban” synthetics are a moral failure.