Drug users turn death dealers as methadone hits street through clinics

WASHINGTON After Jennifer Vanlieu turned to methadone treatment to beat an addiction to heroin and pain pills, she morphed from drug-user to convicted drug-dealer.

Vanlieu said she got a carryout methadone dose at a clinic operated by CRC Health Corp. in Richmond, Ind., in March, 2010, and then gave about 15 milligrams to her friend Carissa Plemons. Plemons died hours later, after ingesting a lethal mix of methadone and other drugs, according to police reports.

Take-home methadone - doses patients carry out instead of taking at clinics - enabled the abuse, said Vanlieu, 26, who was sentenced to six years in prison for dealing the drug to Plemons. While she didn't sell it to her friend, she said in an interview that other clinic patients often re-sold their take- homes. CRC is owned by Boston-based Bain Capital Partners and is the largest U.S. provider of methadone treatment.

"Some would sell it in the parking lot," she said.

Liquid methadone, used for decades to help addicts abate withdrawal symptoms as they quit heroin or other opiates, is leaking into illegal street sales via take-home doses, according to law-enforcement officials in Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. Investigators in each of those states have linked such "diverted" doses to clinics operated by CRC.

Some former employees say the company, which operated 57 clinics in 15 states last year, works to maintain high enrollments despite chronic understaffing, increasing both CRC's profitability and the chance that its take-home methadone doses will be abused.

"That was the culture - keep the census up," said Mike Liaudaitis, who worked as a counselor at CRC's clinic in Goldsboro, N.C., from mid-2009 until early 2011. He recalls being swamped with a 64-person caseload that exceeded the state's limit of 50. Counseling suffered as a result, he said. "We had no choice but to buy into it to keep our jobs."

Cupertino, Calif.-based CRC, which also operates in- patient treatment centers, youth programs and weight-management services, doesn't put profits ahead of patients, said Chief Executive Officer R. Andrew Eckert, in a statement issued in September. He defended carryout dosing, which can help keep patients on methadone and off illegal drugs, by easing the inconvenience of having to visit a clinic daily.

"Our mission is to help these individuals, but sadly, we cannot report 100 percent success," Eckert said. "No treatment provider can."

While any health care company encounters "instances of chance that are regretful and unfortunate," there are "hundreds of thousands of clients our facilities have successfully treated since our founding in 1995," said Kristen Hayes, a company spokeswoman, in an e-mail. CRC has experts who visit each clinic to maintain quality and guide improvements in counseling and other areas "unlike any other provider in the business," she said.

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Drug users turn death dealers as methadone hits street through clinics