TEEN DRUG TREATMENT BILL SPURS CONFLICTS

AUSTIN -- A struggle between the rights of teens and the rights of their
parents is emerging over a bill intended to keep minors from checking
themselves out of drug-treatment facilities.

Concerns over whether the bill guts reforms to the psychiatric system
made in the early 1990s has led to a potential snag in its passage as
the legislative session grinds toward its final day on May 28.

Changes made to the bill by the Senate to guard some of those rights
were removed in the House on Friday.

Senate Bill 22, which raises the age from 16 to 18 at which a minor can
check out of a treatment facility without a parent's permission, may go
to a conference committee next week if senators believe that it strips
away the rights of teens to protect themselves against abusive parents
or fraudulent facilities.

Shapiro tried unsuccessfully to pass a similar measure in 1999. During
that legislative session, the Plano Republican filed a package of
anti-drug bills after her area was hit hard by a wave of heroin- related
deaths, most of them people under 21.

All but one of those five bills died that session.

The treatment-center bill is favored by parents of addicted children and
by the heads of treatment centers who say teen-agers who don't want to
go through painful drug detoxification can simply leave and go back to
using drugs.

"Parents should have a final say in the appropriate course of treatment
for their children," said state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R- Plano, the
bill's sponsor.

Current law allows a teen-ager at 16 to check out of a treatment
facility without a parent's permission.

The law is that way largely because of Sen. Mike Moncrief, D-Fort Worth,
who orchestrated reforms to the system in the wake of reported abuses of
children in psychiatric and drug-treatment facilities in the early
1990s.

Statewide hearings on the issue also revealed that parents could use the
facilities as a dumping ground for unruly young people, Moncrief said.

In March, a group of senators led by Moncrief softened the bill to
require the child to stay only 14 days against his or her will, and lets
a doctor decide if the child should stay another two weeks after that.

After a month, a parent must go to court to force the child to stay in
the facility, according to the amendment.

The House, however, cut out those protections Friday when it passed the
bill. Now, unless senators don't fight for Moncrief's amendments, it
would head to a conference committee to find a compromise.

A decision is expected next week on whether to form that committee.