Pubdate: Tue, 16 Mar 2004
Source: Metrowest Daily News (MA)
Copyright: 2004 MetroWest Daily News
Contact:  http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/619
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

THE COST OF CUTTING DRUG TREATMENT

It's hard to drum up public sympathy for drug addicts, let alone public 
money. Drug addicts are considered unattractive and unworthy of compassion. 
They've brought on their own problems, we tell ourselves, so let them dig 
their own way out.

Unless, that is, the drug addict is your son, your neighbor or a childhood 
friend who somehow fell by the wayside. Then you see addiction for what it 
is: an illness, difficult but not impossible to treat, that disables and 
sometimes kills its victims.

That friend or relative might be someone like Frank Snow, whose sad story 
was told in Sunday's MetroWest Daily News. Though just 19 years old, Snow 
had already hit bottom several times. He'd been through residential rehab 
once to kick his heroin addiction, then fell off the wagon, then sobered up 
again. He had sobered up two weeks ago and had landed full-time job, but 
again he tripped up. He was found dead of an apparent overdose at a 
Framingham shelter.

Another round of rehab might have done the trick for Frank Snow, but rehab 
is getting harder to find. Two years ago, there were 900 beds available in 
detox facilities statewide, including a 15-bed unit not far from the 
shelter where Snow died. Cuts to MassHealth, the primary payer for detox 
services, have reduced that number today to about 530.

This retreat from drug treatment comes at a time when the use of heroin 
continues to climb. Between July 2002 and June 2003, its final year of 
operation, the Framingham detox center admitted 1,100 people, and more than 
800 of whom completed the week-long program.

The lack of detox beds is just the part of the problem. Serious substance 
abuse goes hand-in-hand with mental health issues, and mental health 
services have also been reduced by both public and private sector spending 
reductions. People who are addicted or mentally ill also have a hard time 
keeping a job, which means they often don't have health insurance. Thus, 
the people who need it most are cut off from the treatments that can save 
their lives.

No one can say whether the availability of a detox bed would have saved 
Snow's life. But there's a window of opportunity, drug treatment 
professionals say, between the moment an addict realizes he has to stop and 
the moment the pain of withdrawal makes unsupported cold turkey nearly 
impossible.

"But there's such a long waiting list to get into most detoxes that the 
window goes by before you get that person in," one shelter resident told 
the Daily News. "How many more people have to die before somebody gets the 
message?"

The conservative political impulse is to show society's disapproval of drug 
abuse -- and discourage others from trying drugs -- by locking offenders 
up. That may take a troubled individual off the street, but it does nothing 
to solve his problems. It also goes against the conservative impulse to 
spend the taxpayers' money wisely. After all, residential drug treatment 
programs cost as little as $55 a day, which is less than half what it costs 
to keep a drug addict in prison.

Shutting down drug treatment programs may be easier politically than 
cutting money for schools or road repairs, but it is neither compassionate 
nor smart. Frank Snow's death is largely Frank Snow's responsibility, but 
it holds important lessons, especially for the governor and the Legislature.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom