Pubdate: Thu, 09 May 2002 Source: Boston Herald (MA) Copyright: 2002 The Boston Herald, Inc Contact: http://www.bostonherald.com/news.html Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/53 Author: Marie Szaniszlo OFFICIALS: HEROIN CRIME WILL SHOOT UP IF $$ NIXED It's been nearly a decade since John almost lost his arm to heroin, and an angel in the form of a social worker sidled up to his hospital bed. He was homeless at the time with an abcess on his arm the size of an apple, the mark of an addict with a 20-bag-a-day habit. Today, at 52, he has a full-time job in a hardware store and a two-bedroom apartment he shares with a roommate. And it is all, he says, because of the one thing he now stands to lose. "Everything I've worked all these years for would go right out the window," he says of a plan to eliminate funding for methadone treatment that he and other addicts need. "And the crime rate's going to go crazy. When you're an addict, you do whatever you have to do to get your fix." The $21.8 billion budget House lawmakers proposed last month would close all 40 of the state's methadone clinics, which House Ways and Means Chairman John Rogers (D-Norwood) said have become a "nightmare" for neighbors. If the cuts go through, all 282 Boston Public Health Commission methadone slots alone would be eliminated, and roughly 75 percent of the 10,000 slots that are funded by Medicaid statewide would be in jeopardy, said Tom Scott of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Division of Substance Abuse. "The human impact would be devastating," said John Auerbach, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission. Like heroin and morphine, methadone is an opiate that acts on the brain's endorphin receptors. But unlike them, it prevents addicts both from getting high and from going into withdrawal. Because weekly counseling and random drug tests are mandatory in methadone treatment, proponents say, it is also sometimes the last, best hope for addicts who have tried and failed other ways of kicking a deadly habit. More than 20 years after it first came into use, however, the idea remains controversial. And with a total of $1.5 billion in cuts in the House's proposed budget, the outlook for public funding for such programs in Massachusetts is bleak. Public health officials and police, however, warn that the alternatives may ultimately prove more costly. Without methadone treatment, they say, many addicts will invariably return to heroin and to sharing needles, thereby increasing the likelihood of HIV infection. And many of those who now have full-time jobs and pay taxes will almost surely resort to crime to pay for their habit, said Lt. Det. Frank Armstrong, commander of Boston's drug control unit. "The question is: Are we robbing Peter to pay Paul?" Armstrong said. "If we close the door on these people, we're going to end up paying the price." - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart