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Saturday, August 15, 1998 Page:
Council turns its back on local people in need
Jim McCarthy, Al Boris, Bernard Mengeringhausen, Tom Leighton Phillip
Latinski and Michael McGinley don’t care about rescuing the lives of local
young people who have succumbed to the temptations of heroinSo next year, on
the campaign trail, don’t let these City Council members give you a snow job
about how concerned they are about drug abuse, drug dealing or drug-fueled
crime. Because on Thursday night, four of them voted against a proposal that
could help transform our home-grown heroin addicts into respectable,
hard-working citizens. McCarthy, who introduced the resolution opposing the
opening of a local methadone clinic, couldn’t make Thursday’s meeting, but he
bears even more of the blame than his four comrades.
McCarthy’s resolution, full of unsupported, unproven allegations about
methadone clinics means that local former heroin addicts, at least 25 from
Luzerne County alone, must travel to Allentown every day for a dose of
methadone. And local addicts without the transportation to Allentown or the
motivation to change their lives will just continue killing themselves.
While the resolution claims that “local law enforcement has recognized a
substantial increase in criminal activity in communities hosting methadone
clinics,” the opponents of such a clinic have been unable to provide anything
to substantiate that allegation. In fact, police in communities with such
clinics have told The Times Leader they have noticed no increase in criminal
activity.
As for the five Council members’ concerns about attracting heroin addicts
from other regions, the executive director of New Directions Treatment Center,
which is proposing the local center, told the council he’d be willing to
restrict the center to residents of Luzerne and Wyoming counties.
Still, the council voted 5-1 to go on record opposing such a clinic, not
only within the city limits, but in all of Luzerne County. While the vote
carries no legal force, it sends a message that the City Council doesn’t care
what happens to local people who are in a fight for their lives against an
insidious drug. It doesn’t care about the half-dozen local people dead from
heroin over the past year.
It doesn’t care that statistics from the National Institutes of Health show
that methadone patients commit far fewer crimes than heroin addicts.
Even an impassioned speech from Mary Rapach, whose 21-year-old brother died
from