When Centreville teenager Kurt Brown, then 16, finally acknowledged his drug
and alcohol addiction and agreed to get treatment, that wasn't the end of
his family's problems.

Brown was forced to wait six months to get a room in a county residential
drug-treatment facility. In the Meantime, he was treated at outpatient
facilities in Falls Church and Reston, more than 10 miles from his home --
which meant that his mother, Georganne, had to leave her job in Pentagon
City in midafternoon to pick him up and drive him to the treatment office.

If there had been an outpatient treatment center for youths in the
Centreville area, "it would have made all the difference in the world," said
Georganne Brown, a single mother who used up all her paid leave making the
special trips.

Since drug treatment, Kurt has been clean and sober for two years. But the
delays in providing such help to youths in western Fairfax have gotten
worse, county officials say. There is a seven-week wait for
services at the outpatient center in Reston, the county-run facility closest
to western Fairfax. Waits are nonexistent for outpatient services at the
county's other two centers, in Franconia and Falls Church, but they are at
the other end of the county.

Moreover, teenagers from all over Fairfax still face a six-month wait for a
bed at a residential treatment center in Herndon.

In a report issued earlier this year, a task force headed by Fairfax Police
Chief J. Thomas Manger concluded that drug and alcohol abuse among youths in
fast-growing western Fairfax has overwhelmed the county's resources.

Although the county's drug office is treating 800 to 900 youths a year, the
task force estimated that there are 7,600 Fairfax students who need, or will
soon need, such treatment. A long wait for counseling, the report warned,
could cause their drug problems to escalate.

The backlog of cases is but one example of the challenges that Fairfax
officials face in keeping up with the demand for government services in the
county's rapidly-growing western end.

The drug task force recommended spending $617,000 to eliminate the wait for
services. The money would pay for a drug-treatment center in the
Centreville-Chantilly area that would provide counseling to 430 teenagers a
year and for more residential services supplied by private contractors.

But County Executive Robert J. O'Neill Jr. did not include the funding in
his proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, saying the
project should be put off for another year because of "its significant
fiscal implications."

Supporters of the additional services have appealed to the County Board of
Supervisors, which will consider O'Neill's budget recommendations tomorrow.

"We know by our statistics that a good portion of kids are using alcohol and
drugs and they're not getting services," said Pat McCollum, who heads the
county's Alcohol and Drug Services youth division. "They are ending up
getting locked up in juvenile detention at a cost of $120 a day with no
treatment to just get released back
out on the streets. . . . That's a waste of money."

There are several private drug-treatment facilities in Fairfax, but the
county-run centers are generally less expensive because they charge on a
sliding scale based on family income.

Two county supervisors whose districts are in western Fairfax said that
O'Neill may be right about putting off the expansion of treatment services.

Supervisor Robert B. Dix Jr. (R-Hunter Mill) said a new treatment facility
in Centreville needs to be "part of an overall strategy dealing with the
adolescent substance-abuse issue."

Supervisor Michael R. Frey (R-Sully) said he doubts that the facility will
get funding this year because of other spending priorities, including an
in-school drug prevention program.

"It is needed and I think it's going to be coming down the road, but I'm not
sure this is the year we're going to be able to do it," Frey said.

Carroll Walker's son waited about five months before he was admitted to the
residential facility in Herndon in 1997. Walker, an elementary school
teacher who lives in Herndon, and her son, who asked that his first name not
be used, said the youngster's drug use worsened while he waited.

It was kind of my last chance to party," said the teenager, now 18, who said
he hasn't used drugs or alcohol since admission to the program 20 months
ago. "It helped me hit my bottom, but kids can die at that bottom -- no
problem."