FUNDING METHADONE TREATMENT SAVES $$

King County is home to thousands of people addicted to heroin. Our societal
response to their -- and our -- problem is extravagantly wasteful.

Much of the harm caused by heroin addiction is harm to the community at
large. For example, heroin addicts are involved in crimes to help pay for
their drugs. And injection-drug use is associated with the spread of
disease, including HIV infection. In response to heroin addiction in our
midst, we dedicate significant public resources to police, prosecutors and
defense lawyers, judges and juries and court personnel. We build, staff and
maintain jails and prisons at great expense.

At the same time, we conspicuously fail to take modest and prudent steps
that would reduce heroin addiction and the costs associated with it. In
particular, we don't provide treatment to those who need and want it.

Effective treatment is available for heroin addiction. "Methadone treatment
significantly lowers illicit opiate drug use, ... reduces crime and
enhances social productivity," according to the National Institutes of
Health. It "has been evaluated using the most rigorous studies, randomized
clinical trials [and] has been shown to be the most effective approach to
treating heroin abusers," according to the U.S. Government Accounting Office.

Public Health-Seattle & King County has a list of more than 700 people
addicted to heroin who are waiting for methadone treatment they cannot
afford. Many more would sign up, according to state and county health
officials, if the wait were not so long. Some have been waiting for more
than two years. Many are homeless. While on the waiting list, many spend
extended periods in jail.

Holding a person in jail costs more than $75 a day. And jail is unlikely to
solve an addiction problem. Providing methadone treatment (including
counseling) costs state or local government $10.36 a day (and the federal
government pays half for Medicaid-eligible individuals).

It is extravagantly wasteful to spend more than $75 a day holding addicts
in jail while failing to spend $10.36 a day or less to address the
underlying problem for prospective members of the jail population.

Recently the Washington State Bar Association, the Washington State Medical
Association, the Washington State Pharmacy Association, the King County Bar
Association, the King County Medical Society, the Washington Society of
Addiction Medicine, the Physicians for Social Responsibility of Washington
and the League of Women Voters of Seattle called on Gov. Gary Locke and the
Legislature to adequately fund the state's share of Medicaid-covered
methadone treatment. So far, they have not done so.

We are encouraged that the city of Seattle has allocated funds to increase
methadone treatment and that King County is considering an additional
allocation. Local government leaders appear to recognize that paying for
methadone treatment is wise as a matter of social policy and as a matter of
fiscal policy.

Why, then, have the governor and Legislature been so unresponsive? The
benefits of treatment and the costs of failure to provide it are well
documented by the data published by our state's own Division of Alcohol and
Substance Abuse. But somehow, the message has not yet gotten through to the
policy-makers in the executive and legislative branches who control
appropriations. Until it does, our response to the problems associated with
heroin addiction will continue to be extravagantly wasteful.

Caroline D. Davis is president of the King County Bar Association. Also
contributing to the article were J. Richard Manning, Washington State Bar
Association president; Maureen A. Callaghan, Washington State Medical
Association president; Charles J. Kahler, Washington State Pharmacy
Association president; Edward R. North, King County Medical Society
president; Joy Ruiz-Molleston, Washington Society of Addiction president;
David C. Hall, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility president,
and Betty Sullivan and Annette Holcomb, League of Women Voters of Seattle
co-presidents.