No joy in this juice

Many years ago the Multnomah County health department snuck a private methadone clinic into the Buckman neighborhood of southeast Portland over the holidays without a word of notice to the neighborhood. I lived a couple of blocks away and joined outraged neighbors picketing the place for a while after it opened. We made a lot of noise, but it didn't do any good. They're still there, we're all gone.

Methadone is a synthetic opiate that's used to treat opiate addicts, historically those hooked on heroin. In a maintenance program, it's usually administered daily in liquid form at a clinic, but customers on good behavior can get take-home doses for the weekends. There's supposed to be counseling to go along with it, but the main draw for the hordes of unfortunate users flocking to the methadone joint – the ony draw for many of them – is the juice.

I learned a lot during the Buckman incident, including a little bit about the state laws regarding siting these facilities. An Oregon statute prohibited opening one within 1,000 feet of a school or licensed day care. One of my unhappy neighnors was a surveyor, and he determined that the one we had gotten was either 995 feet or 1003 feet from a high school, depending on where you measured to. I filed a lawsuit to take the issue up with a judge, but soon decided to move to a nicer house in a different neighborhood. Nobody else wanted to take up the legal battle, and that was that.

So it was with a bit of interest that I read this story last week about a new methadone shop opening 950 feet from a Catholic grammar school in Hillsboro. It turns out that the geniuses in the state Legislature changed the law in 2019 to allow county commissioners to waive the 1,000-foot rule. Of course, it's the county health department that's always hot to open these things, and so you may as well have just repealed the state rule entirely.

Ah, the Oregon legislature, working hard and smart for you, as always. Thanks, Kate Lieber! Thanks, Lew Frederick! A swell job you're doing. And thanks, Kate Brown, for signing that stinker into law. You were great all around.

The people who live and work around the new clinic probably won't have their worst fears realized, but it's not going to help their property values or livability any. Back in the days of the picket lines in Portland, the recovering addicts started lining up on the sidewalk at about 5 a.m. to drink the nasty syrup. A lot of them drove their cars to get there, and of course they all drove off under the influence. Some of them made a beeline to the nearby convenience store to down a 40-ounce malt liquor right after their shot of the magic juice (which, I learned, had been invented by the Nazis).

To a person, the patients hated the people who ran the place. And the long-time customers were physically beat up by the toll that years of methadone had taken on them. Some of them literally limped in. They looked 20 years older than they actually were. One defense lawyer I know said they would be better off if the clinic gave them heroin. I thought there were other treatments nowadays, like "bupe." From what I saw, methadone should be a last resort. The scene at the juice bar was one of constant, profound sadness. And it had a high impact on its surroundings.

Anyway, sorry, St. Matthew School, you get to start looking the other way, as do the other neighbors. Don't forget to send a thank you note to your state senator and representatives as well as to the bobbleheads on your county commission. 

And to think that five years ago, this would not have been allowed. Remember how the proposed change in the state law was in the papers and on the news, and everyone was invited to testify at a local public hearing? Me neither.