HEALING WHILE STEALING

The creation of 10 drug- and alcohol-abuse centers around Kentucky,
modeled after Louisville's Healing Place, is a welcome
development.

It suggests that Gov. Ernie Fletcher really wants to make progress in
dealing with substance abuse.

Unlike those who assume, reflexively, that the answer to antisocial
behavior is jail time, Gov. Fletcher recognizes disease when he sees
it, and knows the right response often is treatment. He sees the
virtue in use of recovering addicts as peer counselors. He thinks drug
courts can help, by working with these centers to put more folks into
treatment and fewer into cells.

In a state administration that so determinedly champions private
sector solutions to social and governmental problems, it's great to
see this Governor throwing $9.5 million at a very worthy project.

It's not so great that $2.5 million of the money comes from federal
tax credits that otherwise would be used to finance affordable housing
for the poor.

In effect, this $2.5 million is being robbed from one group of needy
and homeless to pay for aiding another. It's the kind of thing that
happens when nobody in Frankfort has the guts to raise new revenue.

Local doctors are justifiably proud of what Louisville's Healing Place
has accomplished with their financial support and volunteer help.
Nurses, med students and other medical staff members also donate time
and expertise. The approach has been replicated in other states, so
why not across Kentucky?

Many physicians - including pioneers Will Ward, Harold Blevins and Ken
Peters - have worked through the Jefferson County Medical Society to
make the Healing Place a success well worth duplicating. Its
detoxification and recovery program has been named "A Model That
Works" by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

It's just a shame there's no healing place for those hooked on "no new
tax" politics. If there were, we might have enough state revenue to
confront the long, embarrassing list of Kentucky's other unmet social
needs.