ADD ENOUGH HEROIN TREATMENT CENTERS

The long journey to drug treatment on demand in King County -- a trip that
will be taken in small, deliberate steps -- begins tomorrow.

Armed with persuasive evidence that methadone treatment is the only
effective regimen to overcome heroin addiction, the county Board of Health
will ask the King County Council's Law, Justice and Human Services Committee
to loosen the stranglehold on licensing treatment centers.

In the face of as many as 20,000 opiate addicts in Seattle and King County,
in the face of the tripling of opiate deaths since 1990, the county licenses
just six methadone treatment centers. Compounding the problem, each is
limited by state law to treating only 350 individuals.

Both restrictions must be eliminated, if elected officials are to be taken
seriously when they proclaim commitment to ridding the city and county of
the title, nation's heroin capital.

We know progress will be incremental. The county must cede back to the state
the authority to license methadone centers -- a power the state has
traditionally held for all other drug and alcohol programs. Then the state
must pony up more funding for methadone treatment at the new centers that
will be created. That's a longstanding responsibility of the state.

Currently, county health director Dr. Alonzo Plough estimates that the
waiting list for methadone treatment has 1,200 people, a number that greatly
underestimates the demand. Assuring these people a chance at treatment, he
says, could be characterized as an emergency response on the part of the
county and state. We agree: Making treatment accessible to these 1,200
addicts is the minimum to be done.

There will be objections all along the way. Methadone substitutes one drug
for another? No, methadone is the workable medication for this treatable
disease. Treatment centers have no place in our neighborhood? No, all
neighborhoods are home to heroin addicts. They are part of every demographic
imaginable.

Moreover, fully half the people desperate for a way out of their addiction
can pay for their treatment. Given that, it is absurd they do not have the
option.

Treatment on demand for alcohol and drug addiction is one bankable way to
win at least one battle of what has laughingly been derided as the war on
drugs. It begins here and now.