Methadone

Methadone, a potent opiate once used almost exclusively to treat heroin addicts, is increasingly being prescribed by doctors as a pain medication and abused by drug users searching for a cheap, easy way to get high, physicians and federal drug officials say. The drug, which comes in pill or liquid form, recently has come under scrutiny in the death of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. A doctor in Studio City prescribed methadone to Smith for pain treatment before she was found dead Feb.

Jonathan Lucas Levine should be celebrating his 21st birthday this month. Probably he would be in college by now, studying to be a math professor or perhaps a psychologist. Surely he would have plenty of friends. The way other kids used to follow him around, his mom dubbed him the Pied Piper. Instead, Donna Levine sits in her Orlando, Fla., apartment surrounded by photos of her only child and tries not to cry again. Three years ago this month, at 18, Jonathan died of a drug overdose.

Jonathan Lucas Levine should be celebrating his 21st birthday this month. Probably he would be in college by now, studying to be a math professor or perhaps a psychologist. Surely he would have plenty of friends. The way other kids used to follow him around, his mom dubbed him the Pied Piper. Instead, Donna Levine sits in her Orlando, Fla., apartment surrounded by photos of her only child and tries not to cry again. Three years ago this month, at 18, Jonathan died of a drug overdose.

A psychiatrist who treated a pregnant Anna Nicole Smith for drug withdrawal testified Monday that the model said she was willing to "do anything" for her unborn daughter but ultimately walked away from a plan to break her dependency on prescription medication. Ten months after the hospitalization described by Dr. Nathalie Maullin, the 39-year-old former Playboy playmate died from an overdose. Prosecutors are pursuing charges against her boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, and two physicians for conspiracy to illegally provide her with prescription medication and other charges.

Methadone appears to be the best way to handle hard-core heroin abuse, despite numerous negative reports in past years about the substitute drug, drug researchers reported last week during a symposium in Palm Beach, Fla. Dr. Loretta P. Finnegan of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said methadone got a bad name because many of the clinics treating heroin addicts have provided inadequate care and follow-up.

Two federal agencies Thursday proposed to help fight AIDS among heroin addicts by allowing interim methadone treatment in cities where comprehensive treatment programs have waiting lists. The plan, published in the Federal Register, was proposed by the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse to make methadone treatments available to more addicts sooner and reduce exposure to AIDS through needle-sharing.

Operators of one of the largest methadone clinic chains in California entered corporate guilty pleas to grand theft charges Thursday and agreed to pay more than $3 million in restitution for improperly billing the state for medical services provided to indigent heroin addicts. The San Diego-based operation, which involves more than 20 partnerships and corporations, is partly controlled by Robert B.

A Highland Park man posed as a chemistry student at California State University, Los Angeles, to set up an illegal methadone-making operation in the school's laboratory, according to police. John Francis Hill, 51, is free on bail after his December arrest in the university parking lot by Glendale police, who said they found 15 grams of packaged methadone, valued at $5,000, in his car and about a pound of the nearly completed drug, valued at about $150,000, in the school laboratory.

Richard, 35, wins sales awards as manager of a supermarket meat department. He owns a $600 suit, two mountain bikes and a new Chevrolet. Twice a week he wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to drive from his Westminster home to a clinic in Stanton to pick up his supply of methadone, which he takes to kill the urge to shoot heroin. Researchers and operators of clinics that dispense methadone point to people like Richard, who has been on methadone for two years, as examples that the drug works.

When she was growing up in the Imperial Valley, Sandra Martinez was surrounded by heroin. "Other places have marijuana and crack, but in the Imperial Valley, the drug of choice is heroin," Martinez said. "You grow up watching your friends use it, and then one day you're 'fixing' too." At 34, Martinez has suffered the downward spiral common to heroin addicts: She wasted away to 87 pounds, was a thief and a prostitute and went to prison. Now Martinez is struggling to get her life together.

The father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter testified Friday that a physician told him the model's drug use was "under control" two years before her death from an overdose of prescription medication. Larry Birkhead said he believed the Playboy playmate was addicted to methadone and other painkillers, and told her internist, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, in a 2005 conversation that he feared she might be obtaining additional pills from other sources. Kapoor said, " 'I believe we have that under control now,' " Birkhead told a judge presiding over a preliminary hearing to determine whether prosecutors have enough evidence to charge Kapoor and two others with conspiracy to illegally furnish prescription medication to Smith.

Drug treatment: The Unreal World column in the July 28 Health section said that Dr. Karen Miotto, director of the UCLA Alcohol and Addiction Medicine Service, had referred to a 75% to 80% relapse rate in most addiction programs, such as methadone, that lack medical treatments. In fact, Miotto had referred to a 75% to 80% relapse rate in most programs that lack such medical treatments as methadone.

Methadone, found in the body of Anna Nicole Smith's son, Daniel, after his death in September, and reportedly prescribed to her, is best known as a treatment for heroin addiction. But it can, and is, being used as a painkiller. The drug has properties that make it more effective in dulling pain -- and yet more dangerous -- than other opiate drugs, such as morphine and oxycodone. --- Methadone is a synthetic opiate first synthesized by German scientists in the 1930s.

Methadone, a potent opiate once used almost exclusively to treat heroin addicts, is increasingly being prescribed by doctors as a pain medication and abused by drug users searching for a cheap, easy way to get high, physicians and federal drug officials say. The drug, which comes in pill or liquid form, recently has come under scrutiny in the death of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. A doctor in Studio City prescribed methadone to Smith for pain treatment before she was found dead Feb.

The Los Angeles doctor placed under scrutiny after reports that he had prescribed methadone to Anna Nicole Smith said Friday that his treatment for the deceased Playboy playmate was "medically sound and appropriate." A Medical Board of California inquiry into Dr. Sandeep Kapoor began after documents surfaced on a celebrity website suggesting that he had prescribed methadone to Smith, according to a board spokeswoman.

State medical officials said Thursday that they were conducting a review of a Los Angeles doctor who reportedly prescribed methadone to Anna Nicole Smith under an alias. Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, who has an office in Studio City, came under scrutiny after information was brought to the attention of the Medical Board of California, Candis Cohen, spokeswoman for the Medical Board, said Thursday. She declined to provide details about the information except that it was related to Smith.

In a massive probe of clinics that distribute methadone to California heroin addicts, government investigators have uncovered what they believe to be a pattern of shoddy management and rampant overbilling that has siphoned millions of dollars from state health insurance programs for the poor. Over the last two years, almost half of the 117 privately owned methadone clinics in the state have come under scrutiny by the California Department of Justice or the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Officials hope to make this the nation's first city to allow private physicians to prescribe methadone to heroin addicts. Saying their city is in the grips of a heroin epidemic, officials want to lure more addicts into taking the replacement drug. The Board of Supervisors asked the health department more than a year ago to look into ways of expanding methadone treatment beyond the city's seven methadone clinics. The department has drawn up a plan.

Dr. Vincent P. Dole, whose research in the 1960s established that methadone could be used to treat heroin addiction, died Tuesday. He was 93. Dole had suffered from complications of a ruptured aorta, family members said. A clinician at Rockefeller University in Manhattan, Dole studied a wide range of human biological processes. But it was his pioneering work with methadone that earned the most attention. He won the Lasker Award in 1988 for his work on the subject.

The first head-to-head comparison of treatments for heroin addiction found that two newer, easier-to-take medicines work just as well as methadone, the standard drug since the 1960s. Unlike methadone, which has to be taken daily, the two other drugs are longer-acting and can be taken only three times a week. Previous studies have shown all three medications--methadone, Orlaam and buprenorphine--to be effective in treating heroin addiction. Orlaam was approved in 1993, but is not widely used.