CRACK PROGRAM STIRS UP RESIDENTS

Aims At Drug Addicts, Pays For Birth Control

Delayed but undaunted, a Southern California woman promised Wednesday to
return to the East Bay with her offer to pay $200 to drug addicts who agree
to use long-term birth control.

But the local activists who greeted Barbara Harris to Oakland by tearing
down a billboard that advertised her offer say they will be ready for her again.

Harris, an Orange County resident, formed Children Requiring a Caring
Kommunity, or CRACK, two years ago after adopting four children from the
same drug-addicted mother and failing to get legislation passed to classify
drug use during pregnancy as a form of child abuse.

CRACK pays addicts $200 to complete a long-term birth control procedure:
Norplant, tubal ligation, an intrauterine device, vasectomy, or one year of
Depo-Provera. So far, 85 women have accepted the deal, Harris said.

The program is supported by private donations that last year totalled almost
$90,000, according to papers filed with the California Attorney General's
office. The $1,800 billboard campaign in the Bay Area was funded by San
Francisco money manager John Novick.

Billboards advertising the offer and Harris's toll-free number have gone up
in Southern California, Fresno, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Tucson and Phoenix,
but Harris said the reception in Oakland was the most hostile so far.
Nevertheless, she promised to place three more billboards in Oakland and
Richmond during the next six months, or longer.

"As a matter of fact, we will advertise in Oakland big-time now, because
nobody is going to tell me that I don't have a right to advertise," Harris
said. "It's amazing that they think these women have a right to give birth
to 8 or 12 or 14 drug-addicted babies, but I don't have a right to hang a
billboard."

Harris' critics, including Planned Parenthood, Alameda County's public
health officials, and leaders of several local drug treatment programs, say
the CRACK project is an absurdly simple approach to an overwhelmingly
complex problem, a blunt club that they say unfairly targets poor and
minority women and will hurt the people it purports to protect.

"Everyone knows that $200 is not going to help one person get into a
recovery program," said Ethel Long Scott, head of the Women's Economic
Agenda Project in Oakland, who organized Tuesday's protest against the CRACK
program, which she said smacks of eugenics and racism. "About the only thing
$200 is going to do is help them get some more dope."

Long Scott and other treatment advocates, like Johnnie Lewis of West
Oakland's SISTER, said Harris's donors' could better spend their money
expanding programs designed to help addicts get off drugs, or to help
children of addicts get the best possible start on life.

"I think it's the worst thing that could probably happen," Lewis said.
"You're not addressing the problem, and the problem is their addiction."

But while several East Bay drug treatment experts agreed with Long Scott and
Lewis, others said they understood the concept of Harris's program, or, like
Hayward Drug Court Judge Peggy Hora, said their support or opposition to the
idea depended on how it was applied.

"Information is never bad, and if women choose to make that decision, I
don't see where that's a problem, particularly if they're not making a
permanent decision," Hora said. "I'm concerned if the only people who are
being targeted for this information are women of color or poor women."

Even those who would be eligible for the plan failed to reach a consensus on
whether Harris's idea was brilliant or barbaric, ensuring the debate will
continue long after the billboards are gone.

"I think it's a good thing, and I think I'm in a position to say that," said
Barbara Corley, a 41-year-old mother of one who is recovering from her
cocaine addiction at Fremont's CURA Inc. residential program.

"Why continue to have children and bring them into this world and you're
going to mistreat them?" said Corley, whose child was reared by her parents.
"From the beginning they have no chance in life. They're destined probably
for jail, prison, death, whatever."

But that solution seemed too final for others, including Dana Williams, a
38-year-old mother of two who is at CURA recovering from addictions to
heroin and crack.

"It's just a blessing to be able to have kids. Now that I'm in recovery, I
might want to have more kids," she said. "I wouldn't sell myself short for
$200."