Pubdate: Fri, 21 Jun 2002
Source: Detroit News (MI)
Copyright: 2002, The Detroit News
Contact:  http://detnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/126
Author: Bill Johnson

DRUG ABUSE TAKES ITS TOLL ON DETROIT

Dr. Calvin Trent, who directs Detroit's Bureau of Substance Abuse, revealed 
this week that drugs are a severe problem in the city. Stopping the scourge 
will test Detroit's will and resources.

The bureau serves people without health insurance, the underinsured or 
those who have Medicaid, the government's health insurance program for the 
poor. Dr. Trent says about half of Detroiters would be eligible for his 
agency's drug treatment services. Fortunately, most don't need them.

But he estimates that 120,000 Detroiters, about 14 percent of the 
population, need drug treatment. About half of this number would be 
classified as poor, but some may not be in a program. The remainder is 
assumed to have private health coverage and to being treated elsewhere.

Detroit is unique in that it is one of the few cities in Michigan offering 
"treatment on demand."

"But even if we could identify and bring everybody into treatment who needs 
it," he told me, "we don't have sufficient funding to pay for their 
treatment. Our funding has been flat for years."

The agency receives $28 million annually. And it's still not enough to meet 
demand.

Funding problems, of course, exacerbate the social consequences of drug 
abuse. Dr. Trent noted that up to 70 percent of criminal arrests in Detroit 
are drug-connected. A like amount of child neglect and abuse cases are 
related to substance abuse. Forty percent of AIDS cases result from 
intravenous drug use. And the longer an addict goes untreated, the worse 
the prognosis for recovery.

Dr. Mary F. Bridges has been in the psychiatric and substance abuse field 
diagnosing and counseling patients since 1982. She has seen firsthand how 
"drug addiction -- mainly heroin and crack cocaine -- is capable of 
transforming a perfectly good human being into one of the most 
self-destructive creatures one could imagine."

It starts with denial, making excuses and blaming something or someone else 
for the drug use, Dr. Bridges says. One addict told her he used drugs 
because there were too many stop lights. So insidious is the addiction that 
it takes on a life of its own. "One drug-addicted person could destroy an 
entire neighborhood," she says.

"The deterioration begins when someone ceases to be a functioning 
individual and family member," Dr. Bridges says. She gave an addict a 
hypothetical choice of having the woman of his dreams for a sexual 
relationship or an "eight ball" (a large ball of cocaine priced in excess 
of $300). "He didn't hesitate in choosing the eight ball," she says. 
Perverted sex acts involving children, the selling of children for sex in 
exchange for drugs and self-prostitution, she says, are common.

Drug abuse is also causing the AIDS virus to proliferate at an alarming 
rate among addicts who share needles and have sexual contact with 
nonaddicts. Detroit is reported to be second only to New York City in 
intravenous drug use.

The money required to support even a $100-a-day habit is likely to come 
from illegitimate sources. Addicts tend to resort to criminal and 
underground activities.

Bridges stresses that social agencies must be reinvented to better identify 
at-risk children.

"Even though we already have a large foster care population," she says, "we 
have to become more serious about removing children from dysfunctional 
homes where parents have been identified as addicts and their children are 
at potential risk for all types of abuse."

To give them a fighting chance to make a life for themselves, the 
psychiatrist says "these children may have to be placed in something that 
resembles an orphanage."

Despite its destructive path, drug abuse is rarely on the public policy 
radar screen. City officials need to focus more on the problem if Detroit 
is to become a safer place to live and raise children.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth