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LePage Says Methadone Clinics Aren’t Providing Counseling to Patients

Gov. Paul LePage continued his criticism of the state’s methadone clinics on Tuesday, vowing to cut state funding from clinics that don’t provide counseling to addicts.

Maine’s 10 methadone clinics are regulated by half a dozen state and federal agencies. Counseling is a requirement to dispense a drug that’s designed to help opioid addiction, but the governor believes only one or two clinics are providing counseling. The rest, he said, are merely distributing the drug.

He told Bangor radio station WVOM that those clinics will lose state funding next year if he has his way.

“In my next biennial budget, there will be no methadone clinics that do not have a clinical component to their clinics. Period,” LePage said.

The comments were an attempt to clarify statement he made last week that he has been trying to close methadone clinics. LePage’s Department of Health and Human Services has proposed rules that treatment advocates argue will force some clinics to close, and his administration has successfully cut MaineCare reimbursement rates to clinics.

Doctors, providers and patient advocates have described these proposals as evidence that the governor is against medication-assisted treatment. But LePage said that’s not true.

“What I am against is standing on a street corner and watching people go into their methadone clinics and spending about six or seven minutes, and out and away they go,” he said. “That’s what I am against.”

An attempt to cut funding for methadone clinics would likely meet stiff resistance from state lawmakers, who have been under pressure to address a heroin crisis that resulted in 157 of the state’s 272 drug overdose deaths last year. The death toll represented a 31 percent increase from 2014.

Journalist Steve Mistler is Maine Public’s chief politics and government correspondent. He is based at the State House.