COUNSELORS SAY THEY DON'T HAVE TIMELY DRUG-USE INFORMATION

Substance-abuse counselors and others interested in tracking drug use
have long considered a periodic report hospitals generate about drug
use to be a valuable tool.

Then last summer, substance-abuse counselors in the program's
Baltimore region, which includes Carroll Hospital Center, noticed
that the reports stopped coming in.

"We are not getting up-to-date information," said Mark Yount,
substance-abuse prevention coordinator for the drug treatment
facility Junction Inc. "Trying to get up-to-date information is
really hard these days, so we are kinda behind."

Put out by the Drug Abuse Warning Network, and overseen by the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services, the reports are useful for monitoring and tracking
emerging drug trends. It helps those fighting drug abuse by keeping
tabs on people who seek treatment in hospital emergency rooms for
drug-related incidents such as overdoses.

For instance, the reports could allow researchers to gauge the
severity of possible methamphetamine abuse in the area, Yount said.

"We are real nervous about this methamphetamine thing, but we don't
know," he said.

Teresa Fletcher, a spokeswoman for the Carroll Hospital Center, said
the facility continues to compile information about drug-related
admissions to its emergency department even though it is no longer
required to do so by the state. But because it now has to be entered
by hand, no information has been available from the state since July 2005.

"It's a time-consuming, manual process, and that's why it takes a
long time to really look at that data," she said.

Administrators at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services say
budget cuts led them to drop the Baltimore region and nine other
metropolitan areas, mostly on the East Coast, from participation in
the program.

Judy Ball, project director for the Drug Abuse Warning Network, said
a redesign of the program led to the realization that running the
program would cost more money, but said they hope to reinstate the
areas cut out of the program sometime in the future.

"We really do hope that we will be able to go back into the cities,"
Ball said. "It's a matter of budget."

Until then, drug-abuse researchers are struggling to find a new way
to collect the data that had been available to them since 1972.

Erin Artigiani, deputy director of policy for the University of
Maryland's Center for Substance Abuse Research, said the organization
has taken to getting information from drug-treatment facilities and
interviewing juveniles being processed by the Department of Juvenile
Services, but the information doesn't compare to that given by the
DAWN reports.

"That was a resource we used for many years. That was something we
thought was really valuable," said Artigiani. "It seems like much of
the northeastern United States isn't included anymore, and of course
that's an important area of the United States when monitoring drug trends."

Getting information directly from hospitals is difficult, because
emergency room doctors find it a burden to monitor and track
drug-abuse cases while concentrating on treatment, Artigiani said.

"They don't want to take someone away from patient care to do it,"
she said. "But it's valuable data and certainly something I would
love to have access to."

[Sidebar]

Tracking Heroin

Heroin-related admissions to Carroll Hospital Center

1998: 131

1999: 121

2000: 88

2001: 70

2002: 100

2003: 151

2004: 143

Source: Carroll County State's Attorney's Office

Heroin-related deaths in Carroll County

1998: 3

1999: 2

2000: 4

2001: 8

2002: 12

2003: 9

2004: 7

2005: 6

2006: 3 (so far this year)

Source: Carroll County State's Attorney's Office