State lawmakers are proposing additional community oversight of methadone clinics.

Legislation (A.8620/S.7928) has been introduced by Assemblyman Tony Simone, D-New York City, and Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, D-New York City, in recent days to require methadone clinics to establish community advisory boards in order to receive operation certificates from the state Department of Mental Hygiene. Simone and Hoylman-Sigal focus on the number of methadone clinics in New York City as a reason to increase community oversight.

There are more than 70 methadone clinics in New York City serving nearly 30,000 people, according to the legislators.

“As the opioid crisis wages on, it is more important than ever that addiction treatment facilities engage local community members when establishing new clinics and maintaining existing clinics.This bill would require that methadone and other controlled substance clinics establish, or take concrete steps to establish, a community advisory board in order to receive an operating certificate from OASAS,” Hoylman-Sigal and Simone wrote in their legislative justification.

“This will encourage collaboration and conversation between service providers and the local communities in which they reside to meet the needs of New Yorkers during this public health crisis.”

Articles 19 and 32 of New York’s Mental Hygiene Law vest the Office of Addiction Services and Supports with the authority to regulate and issue operating certificates to providers administering methadone and other controlled substance as part of an addiction treatment program. OASAS officials are supposed to consider the public need for such services, including local, regional and statewide need, the capacity and fitness for the applicant to administer the services and the character and competence of the facility operator.

Dunkirk’s methadone clinic opened in 2022 after nearly five years of controversy focused mainly on proposed locations for the clinic. Lack of community oversight wasn’t raised as an issue publicly. Methadone can be dangerous in large amounts and most patients are required to take the liquid medicine daily at clinics as part of an addiction recovery plan. The federal government did relax guidelines during COVID-19 to allow methadone clinics to allow stable patients to take methadone at home, a move that did not increase methadone overdose rates.

The share of overdose deaths involving methadone declined from 4.5% in January 2019 to 3.2% in August 2021, according to a study by U.S. government researchers.

The Associated Press reported in 2022 that more than 400,000 people in the United States take methadone as part of their treatment for addiction to opioids such as heroin, fentanyl and painkillers.