YOUTH TREATMENT PROGRAMS SWAMPED

Record numbers of young Torontonians are requesting professional help to
overcome drug addictions and alcoholism - more than there are treatment
programs for.

According to the Toronto Research Group on Drug Use, requests for treatment
among people age 24 and under have risen almost 50 per cent since 1994 -
from 333 between 1994/1995 to 491 between 1998/1999.

Yet the funding for addiction services has been frozen at 1993 levels, at
$110 million.

The average waiting time for Toronto's six provincially funded youth
treatment centres is estimated at four to five months. None of those six
centres is residential.

There are only two such residential centres for youth in Ontario: Sister
Margaret Smith Centre in Thunder Bay and Alwood Treatment Centre Inc. in
Ottawa. But even those two programs are limited.

Sister Margaret Smith Centre runs a five-week program for youth ages 13 to
17. There are now 21 people on the waiting list for the centre's 10 spaces.
Most of the 10 won't be admitted until September.

Alwood is a six-month program (followed by 18 months of aftercare) for
youths ages 16 to 25. There are seven people on Alwood's two-month waiting
list. Of the 14 beds available, eight are reserved for males, six for females.

According to this year's Drug Use In Toronto report, the major problem
substances cited by young clients receiving substance abuse treatment are
cannabis (25 per cent), alcohol (22 per cent), cocaine (21 per cent) and
heroin/opium (8 per cent).