GILMORE DRUG PROGRAM PROMOTES RECOVERY

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

A major initiative of the Gilmore administration has attracted little
attention during its journey through the General Assembly. It is
disturbing that debates over a moment of silence in schools,
identification at the polls, and the right to hunt have allowed
possibly the most important Gilmore step to be practically ignored.

Gilmore's project SABRE attempts to do something about addiction and
its effect on crime. His effort is the boldest that any administration
has ever made -- to crack down on drug dealers and, at the same time,
offer treatment to those incarcerated as a result of drugs.

Helping those with the disease of addiction whose disease has landed
them behind bars is not, apparently, a popular cause. The Senate
Finance Committee and the Appropriations Committee have cut $6.5
million from the funds the Governor put in his budget for this program
in adult corrections and $1.2 million from juvenile programs.

For once a Governor has tried to do something about the revolving door
whereby Virginia prisons warehouse drug and alcohol users and then
send them back to the streets still suffering from addiction and
primed to commit crime again.

The budget conferees have an opportunity to put the money back that
the Governor allocated as an important first step toward solving
Virginia's serious drug problems. This is no time to cripple a badly
needed treatment plan.

Fred Carreras,
Chairman,
Regional Alliance Against Substance Abuse