ROCKLAND, Maine — The former owner of the now defunct Turning Tide methadone clinic in Rockland will be serving another 40 days in jail after violating her probation on a prior drug charge.
Angel Fuller McMahan, 43, of Owls Head, was ordered Thursday, Feb. 16, in 6th District Court to spend 40 days of a previously suspended jail term for the probation violation.
Fuller McMahan was arrested Jan. 7 for operating under the influence. In October 2010, Fuller McMahan had been sentenced to 364 days in jail with all but 30 days suspended for cocaine possession. She had also been placed on probation for a year following the completion of that initial jail sentence.
She was the founder and owner of Turning Tide at the time of her arrest on the cocaine charge. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services closed Turning Tide during the summer of 2010 in the wake of the arrest of Fuller McMahan and a charge against a drug counselor for a drug offense.
Fuller McMahan also pleaded guilty Feb. 16 to the OUI charge and was fined $500 and had her motor vehicle license suspended for 90 days.
“Turning Tricks” would have been a more suitable name for that clinic. Who’d a’thunk it? A drug addict running a methadone clinic.
Methadone clinics is just another way to camoflage drug dealing!!!!!!!!
Getting people of drugs is important.Knowing exactly who is operating facilities to assist in getting people off drugs is very important!
But methadone clinics bring the property values up so much. Everyone wants to live within walking distance, as the people going there are of the highest caliber in society.
They probably wouldn’t get their travel check if they lived within walking distance……
She should’ve gotten all 364 days with nothing suspended up front and the possibility of 30 days off at the end for good behavior. But in these days of penny pinching budgets, I’m surprised anyone gets sentenced to jail time anymore.
Methadone clinics would go out of business if they were in the business of getting people off drugs. How many addicts of this kind does Maine have? I think with the number of clinics we have we could clean this state up within a year if they were in the business of taking them off drugs. Instead they feed their addiction. Paid with the almighty taxdallor.
Its funny how they get paid more for giving higher doses . Then the up the dose slowly knowing if the gave them the full amount they will be getting they might kill a meal ticket (person being treated) . they never seem to want to get the people off methadone they would loose money. It has nothing to do with helping people off drugs . Just another form of leagal dealing when up tax payers are footing the bill
Well stated. Totally agree. I didn’t see many people on methadone until the clinics popped up. Funny how that works.
David, where are you getting your information? Clinics definitely don’t get more money for giving higher doses. And where do you get your claim that methadone maintenance treatment hurts more than it helps? That’s blatantly false!
It is totally true…do your research…federal dollars are paid our state for dispensing methadone. The more clients, the higher the dose, the more the state is funded. It is surprising that our Penobscot County Jail can get these addicts off all substances in 30 days there…..so why can’t the clinics follow their example ?? Clinics create jobs, clean and sober addicts do not.
Did it ever occur to you that new people get addicted to drugs every day? Your thinking is so black and white that you are not even making sense. Which is concerning, since you are forming opinions and then posting them in a public forum.
We Know people get addicted each day I just do not think methadone is the best possible Treatment for most in fact on average it hurts more people than it helps.
You MUST be making money off this methadone system somehow.
Using a drug to get people off a drug. How stupid is that.
Baldacci stupid.
That’s how stupid it is.
I asked someone that was going to the clinic in Bangor how long must a person be on methadone before they become drug free and their response was, it’s up to the person themselves if they can cut the dose for the next month. They said they knew someone in the clinic that has been going there for 8 years and only come down on the dose once…what do we call them people..lifers?
I know many, many of them. Working in the field of people. I haven’t happened to run into anyone that goes to the Methadone clinic that is now off the drug. They don’t want to deal out pot to MS and cancer patients, but will deal this stuff out as a cure. I haven’t seen these clinics cure anyone.
“it’s up to the person themselves”
I think that’s how Montessori schools educate.
Please someone correct me if I’m wrong
I find it very disturbing that a Methadone clinic would be owned by someone like this. Is this the type of person who is supposed to be helping people overcome addiction???
You are right this fiasco was disturbing to the nth degree at the time and still is. It won’t take too many episodes like this to compromise the usefulness of this program in the mind of the public and rightly so. In some respects what is just as disturbing is the way so many pounce on this single awful instance of malfeasance to use as a blanket condemnation of the whole treatment program.
Its a pretty tough standard and wildly perfectionist mindset they seem to be advocating. Especially when you consider the way drug abuse has proliferated in the fabric of the community.. Close ’em all down and do what? Bitching on the BDN webpage is easy but hardly an effective alternate treatment. Nothing dealing with addiction is every going to be anything but partially effective. Surely saving some lives for sobriety and living clean is better than abandoning all these lost souls. Abandonment is what I’m hearing in so many negative comments about the whole program; not just this one awful betrayal of trust, from a whole bunch of proponents of what seems to me to be just another example of ossified thinking and self righteous mendacity. Golden Rule not! Hardly the best this country has to offer!
It’s very unfortunate that this woman relapsed and when she did she should have stepped down and handed the clinic over to someone else. Because she didn’t it turned out to a big mess that hurt a lot of people. But that doesn’t mean that an addiction treatment facility should not be ran by someone in recovery. It’s actually very common that treatment centers are ran by and staffed by people in recovery who are wanting to help others and these places are very well ran. What happened at Turning Tide was an isolated incident and is not an indication that a recovering addict cannot or should not run a methadone clinic.
Say what you will about this lady, but clinics are necessary and apart of EVERY society. I especially love it when people claim there tax dollars pay for drug treatment…Get real. How do you start to negate or assume where your tax dollars went. PLEASE TELL ME. Its just simple and easy to bash this….So ya, that is all. Continue thinking you know IT ALL
Oh, really? Where were these clinics during the Opium Wars? Where were these clinics when Marco Polo brought “spices” from China back to Italy? Where were these clinics during Prohibition?
Judge Joseph Field then modified McMahan’s sentence to 14 days in jail
and 14 days under house arrest, allowing McMahan to continue her
methadone treatments both in jail and out.
This is what happens when you give an inch to a methhead. Oh poor me I need my treatment or I will die. I have a question. How many of the people in the news for criminal activity are on the treatment program? The ones that were involved in today’s home invasion, were they being treated? It would be interesting to know.
Not everyone in methadone treatment are doing well. Some are still using and some of them break the law to raise money for drugs. But as a number of studies have shown the majority of people on methadone maintenance do very well, are completely addiction free and live normal, productive lives. That’s a fact. The failure of some individuals in no way means that the whole program is a failure. In fact methadone maintenance treatment is the most effective treatment method for opioid addiction of all treatment methods available.
If they are addiction free, why do we pay for them to keep going back. As other people have posted before, all you’re doing is trading one addiction for another. It is no different than trading smoking for chewing tobacco. One is just as bad as the other.
I’d like to know who the rocket scientist was that allowed this former ( and current) drug addict to open a methadone clinic.
Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse!!!
I miss Tuttle’s Shoe Barn.
Are we so focused on business and job creating that we can’t see that this business is rotten to it’s core.
I say we outlaw this sort of enabling business and out source it to NH or Mass.
Angel Fuller McMahan, 43, of Owls Head, was ordered Thursday, Feb. 16, in 6th District Court to spend 40 days of a previously suspended jail term for the probation violationShe was the former owner of the now defunct Turning Tide methadone clinic in Rockland. And look at how the methadone helper her get off the coke! (NOT)The Rockland clinic site is going to re-open soon, and another one is in the works just 5 miles down the road in Warren, How lucky can we mid-coast folks be! State sponsored drug dealing and all on Rt. one for your quick shopping experience!
I commute to Rockland 5 days a week in the early morning and I was amazed at how when the Methadone Clinic was shut down how the traffic went down drastically. I could always tell if the drivers were heading there… they usually drove extremely fast.