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Opinion piece in response to the recent spate of young kids taking their parents methadone.
Daily Telegraph
Lives fall through the cracks
By Clare Masters
October 06, 2006 12:00
IT has restored the lives of many recovering drug addicts, but how many children have to die before methadone distribution is regulated properly?
A LITTLE boy is crawling around on the floor, exploring the new and exciting world that is his living room. Thrilled with his own incredible ability to get himself around, he reaches for a small container on the coffee table.
Like most toddlers it is something inexplicable, that instinct that compels him to tip the contents of the container down his throat - it is only a few millilitres, but it is methadone and it is toxic enough to fell his little body in just a few hours.
Sydney Children's Hospital at Randwick emergency paediatrician Dr Tori Pennington says children aged under four are the most vulnerable to the many potentially fatal ingredients in their cluttered worlds.
"This is an age where children are exploring their environment. It's common for them to put things in their mouths,'' she says. About 75 per cent of poisoning cases that arrive, sirens blaring, into her emergency room involve children aged under five.
While only a handful are methadone overdoses, all are preventable and even one is too many. On Wednesday, Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch found a seven-month-old baby died of a methadone overdose after he was deliberately given the drug by his mother - a drug addict on the methadone program.
If the thought of a mother deliberately feeding her child a class A drug takes your breath away, consider that this was the second time one of her children had died in similar circumstances. Consider that in this infant's short life, he had been treated for neo-natal abstinence syndrome in St George Hospital.
Question whether if takeaway methadone doses were not available from hundreds of chemists across Sydney, would this baby still be alive. There are more than 16,500 methadone addicts in NSW, an increase of 41.7 per cent since 1998, and almost 50 per cent of the doses are currently dispensed through more than than 500 pharmacies.
But while methadone is responsible for a handful of children overdosing - the Children's Hospital has had only four cases in the past six years - it is also the reason why thousands of people live a basic, normal existence, refreshingly uncomplicated and free of the tenacious grip of illicit drug addiction.
Drug experts across the world study the NSW methadone program as an example of how heroin addiction is being successfully dealt with. "An appropriate dose of methadone makes the drug user less likely to take other drugs, which makes for a more predictable parent,'' child advocate body NAPCAN paediatrician Dr Sue Packer says.
"But at the same time, it can kill babies and is a serious medication - it all comes down to our capacity to assess individuals and their ability for keeping their babies safe and this is a very, very difficult question to answer.''
Last year, a six-year-old girl died of a methadone overdose in Sydney and in June this year, a 10-week-old baby was taken away from her parents - both on the methadone program - after authorities found she had been affected by the drug three times.
In March this year, a two-year-old boy in Scotland died after drinking his mother's methadone because he thought it was a soft drink. In 2005, 14 calls were made to a NSW-based poisoning hotline relating to children's exposure to methadone.
Although the seven-month-old - found dead face-down between the mattress and the side of his cot in 2003 - was given the drug by his mother, most methadone overdoses are tragic accidents, propelled by a child's natural curiosity.
Mothers, regardless of their vices, are fiercely protective of their children. However methadone users are more likely to live chaotic lives and a child-resistant methadone container is still not child-proof.
Kidsafe NSW executive officer Greg Stead's official stance is that methadone taken home in bottles should be locked away out of the reach of children. But should methadone in takeaway containers be given to parents with young children?
"We don't have a stance on that but my personal opinion is that this is an issue that should be seriously considered - whether users with very young children should be able to take it home,'' he said.
Most anti-drug advocates are extremely vocal about the benefits of the methadone program. St Vincent's Hospital expert Dr Alex Wodak has previously told The Daily Telegraph there were literally thousands of people who had "their lives turned around by the methadone program''.
This much might be true. But for the defenceless babies and curious children who accidently take the drug, their chance at life can be zero.
Daily Telegraph