First things first: The planned new, county-funded drug treatment
facility on West Wendover Avenue is a good thing.

The revamped 56-bed center will represent a hopeful new beginning for
a site that is sorely needed and has been under-used in the past. It
received a rare, unanimous $2.7 million commitment from the county
commissioners. It will treat a variety of substance-abuse problems.
And it will employ a re-engineered approach to drug treatment in
Guilford, say mental health officials.

But the question remains: What about crack cocaine? According to a
2004 News & Record series, at least 70 percent of homicides in
Greensboro and High Point and most robberies, aggravated assaults and
larcenies were tied to crack use. Crack also is linked to prostitution
and the county's growing AIDS/HIV problem.

Yet fewer than half of the beds in the center will go to
crack-addicted patients. County officials continue to stress that the
facility, to be operated by a Missouri-based company called Bridgeway,
is not intended, by itself, to address the crack epidemic in Guilford
County. But what is? And when, where and how? What is the long-range
plan?

And why, given the many ways it threatens the community's health and
safety, isn't the crack epidemic a higher priority?

Some local agencies that treat crack addiction say they were surprised
that the new facility won't devote more beds to long-term residential
treatment. So were some commissioners. "I think the majority of the
commissioners were thinking it was a long-term (residential) treatment
center," Commissioner Melvin "Skip" Alston said Thursday.

According to the News & Record series, many in the drug treatment
community agreed that the best way to succeed at treating crack
addiction is residential treatment, for as long as a year, in addition
to outpatient follow-up. Three years later, not everyone is so sure.
"The scientific/medical community has moved away from assuming that
individuals should be treated identically," Paul Nagy, a Duke
University consultant who works with county officials, wrote in a Nov.
27 News & Record column.

Billie Martin Pierce, the county's mental health director, agrees and
says the new center is the important first ingredient in "a continuum"
of treatment. "You have to start where you have to start," she said.
But even if you accept that premise -- and many don't -- then what?
What is the county's big-picture strategy for crack treatment? And
where is any sense of urgency?

Alston said he might push to cancel the Bridgeway contract if there
isn't a satisfactory answer.

No need to go that far. But the county does lack a long-range plan for
substance abuse treatment, especially crack.

Maybe mental health officials should follow their own example.
Treatment in the new center will be based on a 12-step model.

Why, then, does the county's plan for treatment begin and end with
Step 1?