CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Despite the testimony of experts and patients that methadone can be an effective strategy for treating drug addiction, some West Virginia lawmakers remain skeptical.

In particular, legislators don’t seem inclined to lift a moratorium on new facilities that use methadone in treating addiction to opioid drugs such as heroin and common prescription painkillers.

During a legislative interim meeting Tuesday, the Select Committee on Health heard from a national expert on methadone and opioid addiction along with patients who credit methadone with saving their lives.

But lawmakers were concerned about the length of time that patients at West Virginia’s nine clinics continue using methadone, which is itself an addictive drug.

“I actually have more questions now than I did coming in,” said Sen. Roman Prezioso, chairman of the Senate Health and Human Resources Committee.

The Marion County Democrat, whose position makes him pivotal in any effort to lift the moratorium, said he’s not yet inclined to consider doing so.

“You want to see some closure to drug addiction, and instead of closure, I’m seeing this go to perpetuity,” he said.

Mark Parrino, president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence, said some patients will use methadone for the rest of their lives. But for other patients, treatment can last between one and three years.

“We’re dealing with a very complex disease,” he said of addiction.

Sophia Grant, who started a treatment program 10 years ago while battling an addiction to painkillers, credits methadone with saving her life.

For the last four years, she’s been gradually reducing her methadone dosage and plans to eventually stop using it altogether.

“My slogan is, it takes as long as it takes,” she said. “For each person, it’s different.”

Methadone works by suppressing the withdrawal symptoms associated with opiate abuse and blocks cravings for the drug. A tightly regulated and exhaustively studied medication, it’s used in treatment by about 260,000 people at roughly 1,200 clinics nationwide, Parrino said.

In 2007, lawmakers put a moratorium on new facilities that use methadone in addiction treatment. They were concerned about people staying on methadone forever, but the drug’s image was also tarnished by the largely unrelated problem of fatal overdoses.

A study published last December in the Journal of the American Medical Association put West Virginia’s unintentional prescription drug related fatal overdose rate at roughly 16 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2006, more than twice the national average. Methadone was involved in 112 of 295 deaths that year, more than any other drug.

But methadone is also widely prescribed as a painkiller, and nearly all the fatal overdoses where it was present stemmed from that use, the study found.

The increase in prescription opioids like methadone, hydrocodone and oxycodone for pain treatment, Parrino said, is one of the reasons the number of methadone clinics has grown over the last 15 years. As the drugs become more common, more people are becoming addicted.

“There have been tectonic changes in how physicians and patients are using medications for the treatment of pain,” he said.

That may not be enough to convince lawmakers to lift a moratorium they say makes sense while they continue to study the question.

Senate Minority Leader Don Caruth, one of the major supporters of the moratorium two years ago, said he’s now convinced that methadone can help overcome drug addiction in combination with therapy and other treatment. But the Mercer County Republican is still in favor of the moratorium.

“We have limited the number of methadone clinics in West Virginia, and I think we have a fair number,” he said.
 

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