Newsbrief: Virginia Judge Jails Woman for Taking Prescription Methadone 8/27/04 When Tazewell, Virginia, resident Kimberly Bucklin, 29, was arrested on child abuse and drug possession charges last year, she was addicted to Oxycontin, the powerful, popular opioid pain reliever. Following her arrest, the Roanoke Times reported, Bucklin enrolled in a methadone treatment program to help her kick the Oxycontin habit. Now the judge who sentenced her to probation has thrown her in jail and sentenced her to serve three years in prison for her efforts. Her offense? Taking the very drug prescribed to her by doctors to kick the Oxycontin habit. That violated the condition of her probation, the judge ruled. In an August 20 hearing, Bucklin's attorney, Tom Scott, the American Civil Liberties Union, and drug treatment advocates asked District Court Judge Henry Vanover to reconsider his ruling. Another hearing has yet to be set, but will not happen before October, Tazewell County Commonwealth's Attorney Dennis Lee said. In the meantime, Bucklin sits in jail. The case illustrates in stark terms the conflict between law enforcement imperatives and the medical needs of recovering drug users. "It really, really is a medical decision and not a legal decision," said Scott, of Bucklin's need for methadone. From a medical perspective, the methadone maintenance was working just as it should, testified Dr. Robert Newman, director of the Chemical Dependency Institute of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. "I would say her response was dramatic, positive and very rapid," he said. Methadone is an effective treatment for opiate dependence, Newman testified. Ordering Bucklin to get off methadone is illustrative of a "terrible conflict" between the law and medicine, he added. Although Bucklin had been on methadone for months, Vanover ordered her to quit using it within six months. Against the advice of her physician, Bucklin began gradually cutting back, but after she suffered cravings and withdrawal symptoms, the Galax Life Center methadone clinic restored her to the higher dose and extended her treatment past the six-month deadline. She was charged with violating her probation in February and has been at the county jail ever since -- except when she had to be hospitalized for severe methadone withdrawal shortly after being locked up. Commonwealth's Attorney Lee said judges in the area routinely bar probationers from taking methadone at a clinic. Bucklin is the first person to be sent to prison for violating such an order, but with more clinics opening in the region, she may not be the last unless the judges are educated about the treatment's efficacy in dealing with opiate addiction. "Despite the fact that the federal government has spent millions in research to determine that methadone is the gold standard for treating opioid dependence, you still have what I would call unenlightened and misinformed representatives of the law enforcement community," said Mark Parrino, president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence. Can Judge Vanover be enlightened and informed? Stay tuned. http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/351/tazewell.shtml
Editorial: Prohibition Itself Must Go 8/27/04 David Borden David Borden, Executive Director, borden@drcnet.org One of the slogans floating around during DRCNet's early days was a clever rearrangement of a popular phrase used in law enforcement situations or at least in enforcement-oriented media: "Ignorance is no excuse for the law." The drug war, and prohibition itself, are sustained by ignorance; getting accurate information out, which the Internet makes more feasible (DRCNet's original claim to fame), will bring the drug war to an end, or so we hope. I wish I could say that Virginia District Court Judge Henry Vanover took such ignorance to a new low when he sentenced Kimberly Bucklin, a 29-year old recovering addict, to three years in prison for using prescription methadone to fight her addiction. Judge Vanover -- ignorantly -- had ordered her to limit the duration of her methadone treatment to only six months. That didn't work -- of course, that's not the way methadone treatment is supposed to work -- and Bucklin's doctor had advised her not to stop the treatment. Unfortunately, it's not a new low, only a continued low. Though numerous judges around the country and the Office of National Drug Control Policy vaunt drug courts as the approach for the future, Judge Vanover's approach to Kimberly Bucklin's case illustrates one of the fundamental problems with them. Whether this was technically a "drug court" in name it's the same idea. Judges are not trained in medicine, yet many second guess the doctors and drug treatment professionals who are. That methadone is largely not recognized by drug courts -- Bucklin was lucky to be allowed to use it for even six months -- is a testament to the profound incompetence of the judiciary in the area of drug addiction. Methadone is just not controversial from the medical and scientific standpoint; in fact it's one of the few issues on which I agree with the current and previous drug czars. Yet as the local prosecutor told the Roanoke Times, it is common in that area for judges to forbid probationers from attending methadone clinics. Perhaps this is an area in which simply providing accurate information to the judges around the country making these decisions will solve the problem. I doubt it will be so simple -- total abstinence is an ideology, and ideology is designed to resist logic and reason. Obviously it must be attempted, and leading lights in addiction treatment, such as Bob Newman of New York's Beth Israel Medical Center, went to Virginia to testify before Judge Vanover to try and change his mind. Some would say we should assume Judge Vanover is a reasonable man and that he deserves the benefit of the doubt that he was merely misinformed. I agree with the approach, but I only partially agree with the sentiment. I don't think Judge Vanover deserves to be considered reasonable, having been arrogant enough to totally ignore the firmly backed-up views of medical professionals and lock a woman up for three years. The most charitable view I could endorse is that he may be generally reasonable but that his decision-making in this area has been influenced by the general ideological climate in ways he does not realize. But that meager possibility should not be misinterpreted as a vote of confidence. We've seen in the pain treatment issue the devastating consequences of allowing police agencies like the DEA to regulate medicine. It's also a mistake to give that power to judges, at least in this setting. Drug courts may in many cases keep people away from prison. In other cases, they may sweep others into the enforcement net for whom the system could otherwise not afford the full process of criminal prosecution. Coercive or mandated treatment raises serious issues for psychology, identity, medicine, civil liberties and cognitive freedom, issues the drug court movement prefers not to discuss. And there are troubling, unresolved abuse problems within the drug treatment world itself. Overall, treatment over incarceration is probably an improvement over the status quo, perhaps a vast one. But it is not the ultimate goal. If a drug user has not physically harmed other people, has not destroyed others' property, has not neglected his or her children, then it's not a judge's business. And that means that lowering the sentences and offering treatment are not enough. Prohibition itself must go. http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/351/editorial.shtml
