Maryland prison inmates may finally get long-required methadone treatment for narcotic addiction this fall if the long-delayed approval of the program is finally granted by state and federal health agencies, corrections officials told lawmakers this week.
“We expect smooth sailing,” said Richard Rosenblatt, Public Safety?s assistant secretary for treatment programs.
The prison program will only treat about 10 percent of the inmates, not the other 45 percent who are users of non-narcotics such as cocaine, amphetamines and marijuana. Methadone is a synthetic narcotic that replaces heroin and allows addicts to go through withdrawal more easily. State law has required a methadone detoxification program for several years, and it was part of the contract with medical providers since 2005, according to legislative auditors.
“Getting a license has been more difficult than anything we would have thought,” Rosenblatt told the Joint Audit Committee. “This is a unique program,” he said, and if approved, Maryland might be the first state to have its prisons certified as methadone clinics.
“Methadone is highly regulated, and you have to go through a number of hoops” to win approval, said Dr. Peter Cohen, medical director of the state Alcohol and Drug Abuse Administration. The state Office of Health Care Quality, which approves the programs, has “a tremendous backlog getting programs certified” due to a staff shortage, said Ventura McLee, the AADA chief of compliance. There are 43 methadone programs in the state.
“The methadone treatment is very, very important,” said Del. Bill Bronrott, D-Montgomery, chair of the House Special Committee on Drug and Alcohol Abuse. “The majority of addictions are non-narcotic addictions. We need the other treatment programs.”
About 80 percent of the people brought into the prison system each year show some form of substance abuse at the time of entry, Rosenblatt said. In order to get more honest assessment of their addictions, new inmates are supposed to be given health assessments by medical professionals ? as opposed to correctional officers ? within the first two hours after intake. At that point, a decision is made to keep the prisoner, or send him or her for medical treatment.
