KING COUNTY HEROIN DEATHS A 'CRISIS'

Heroin continues to kill King County residents in record numbers this year.
At least 98 overdose deaths were recorded through October, keeping pace
with 1998's unprecedented year, according to new data from the Medical
Examiner's Office.

Seattle now ranks among the top metropolitan areas in the nation for heroin
use and death rates.

"It's not encouraging. . . . It's a really full-blown public-health
crisis," said Alonzo Plough, director of Public Health-Seattle & King
County. Last year, 144 deaths were reported, more than double the 1990 number.

Plough and other officials are mounting a major campaign to make treatment
more available and to approach the problem in new ways.

Plough told the Seattle Downtown Rotary Club at a luncheon yesterday that
Mayor Paul Schell and King County Executive Ron Sims will soon appoint an
advisory council to find solutions to the crisis. Leaders in business,
medicine, public health and government, and former addicts will be on the
commission.

"We want to increase awareness," Plough said. "With the help of people in
this room, we can change a really bad mark against this region."

Plough and Dr. Rob Thompson, a cardiologist and co-director of the
Washington Addiction Treatment Task Force, said many people might be in
denial about the problem because they don't see it firsthand. But Plough
reeled off statistics to argue how serious it is. Heroin-related
prosecutions, which increased about 18 percent from 1991 to 1996, jumped 25
percent in 1998, to 3,270. King County Jail inmates are tied with those in
Chicago for the second-highest proportion who test positive for heroin - 17
percent.

In addition, Seattle was fifth in the nation for heroin-related
emergency-room admissions during the first half of 1998, according to Ron
Jackson, director of Evergreen Treatment Services, a major heroin-treatment
clinic.

Plough said that the majority of addicts want to kick their habits but not
enough treatment options are available. Only 1,300 of the estimated 10,000
to 12,000 King County heroin users received treatment last year. About 500
clients of the Health Department's needle-exchange program are on treatment
waiting lists at any given time.

"This shows people want out of the downward spiral," Plough said.

Treatment in a methadone clinic, recognized as the most effective therapy,
costs about $300 a month, compared with about $3,000 a month to house a
jail inmate, Plough said. Taking methadone regularly enables a recovering
addict to work and function in society.

Plough said the Metropolitan King County Council next month will consider a
request by the county Board of Health to increase the number of licenses
available for methadone clinics beyond the current six. He urged support of
the request to help addicts and decrease the financial cost to society.

"We can't possibly hope to lock up every one of them," he said.