Bloomington is expected to impose a moratorium this month on new addiction treatment centers, with city leaders taking time to consider ways to provide treatment options while avoiding adverse consequences reported in other cites that were unprepared for the opioid crisis and the growing and lucrative business of treating the addicted.
"We were unprepared," Mary Catherine Carmichael, a spokeswoman for Mayor John Hamilton's office, said Thursday about the influx of addiction services that have set up shop in Bloomington. "We are in full support of people receiving the treatment they need for addiction, but we are simultaneously responsible for trying to avoid the unintended consequences a proliferation of unregulated treatment centers could bring to the community.
"We're trying to determine the best path forward for the city. We want to know where we are going," she said. "The council will be imposing a moratorium on addiction treatment centers."
Details of the plan, which would put a halt to new addiction treatment centers for a set period of time, are still being hammered out, Carmichael said. She expects the Bloomington Plan Commission to consider the moratorium at its June 11 meeting, and said she expects it to be introduced at the June 13 city council meeting, then voted on by that body for final approval June 20.
"They are acting quickly," she said, expediting a process that often takes months. "We are hitting the pause button, to give ourselves time to give this issue the thought and attention it deserves."
During the past year, several treatment centers have settled in Bloomington. The Indiana Center for Recovery on West First Street, an abstinence-based program that has a treatment center and on-site housing for patients, opened quietly last summer and was the first. There are three medically-assisted treatment businesses, and a fourth — which has a center in Ellettsville — is seeking a Bloomington site because of an overabundance of clients.