Pubdate: Fri, 12 May 2000 Source: Baltimore Sun (MD) Copyright: 2000 The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper. Contact: http://www.sunspot.net/ Forum: http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/ultbb/Ultimate.cgi?actionintro Authors: Robert Welsh, Eric Sterling and William P. Jenkins Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n616/a09.html Note: Eric E. Sterling is president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. COMMUNITY HOSPITALS SHOULD BE OFFERING DRUG TREATMENT As a member of the West Timonium Heights Community Association, I was really impressed with Dan Morhaim's column "Hospitals can help solve drug problems" (Opinion Commentary, May 5). He not only presented facts and figures about a complex problem, but offered a compassionate, no-nonsense solution. All communities have alcohol and drug problems. What better place to handle treatment and follow-up programs than our community hospitals? Their 24-hour schedules could accommodate even addicts with bizarre round-the-clock work schedules that rule out 9-to-5 treatment programs.(Yes, there are working alcoholics and drug users.) I certainly commend efforts such as that of Mayor Martin O'Malley and the Baltimore police to clear street corners of drug dealers and to decrease killings. But their job is nearly impossible if nothing is done about the root of the problem through education and treatment and follow-up programs for current addicts. Helping addicts to recover is like throwing a pebble in a pond: Benefits ripple out in all directions. I agree with Dr. Morhaim. It is time to play serious ball: Dollars up. Robert Welsh, Timonium Dan Morhaim has the right idea. Indeed, using hospitals to treat drug addiction was part of the recommendation of the Mayor's Working Group on Drug Policy Reform (submitted to Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke in Nov. 1993) that all primary care providers be encouraged to provide substance abuse treatment. Hospital-based treatment was also an explicit recommendation of the Jan. 1995 "Report of the Grand Jury of Baltimore City," a panel charged with investigating the city's drug problem. These recommendations, which could save Maryland billions of dollars, have not been acted upon, because of the vicious stereotyping of addicts and a lack of political integrity. Drug addicts are stereotyped as terrible people because they are criminal. But most addicts suffer terribly and treating them as law-breakers interferes with our ability to provide humane treatment. National drug policy leaders talk about drug treatment, but fail to deliver. U.S. drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey fights for more money for the Pentagon for Colombia, not for the kind of treatment Dr. Morhaim argued for so well. Eric E. Sterling, Washington, The writer is president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. DRUG WAR HAS FAILED EVEN TO KEEP PRISONS CLEAN Vice President Al Gore wants to spend $500 million drug testing prison inmates ("Gore calls for prison drug tests," May 3). What does it imply when, after 60 years of drug prohibition and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the drug war, we still do not even have drug-free prisons? William P. Jenkins, Bel Air - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D