STATE TARGETS DRUG CRISIS

Plan Seeks $9.1m For Treatment Programs

BOSTON -- Massachusetts has no cohesive plan for battling a growing
substance-abuse problem and must focus more closely on prevention to shed
its image as a state with one of the highest rates of addiction in the
country, officials said yesterday.

At a Statehouse press conference that drew lawmakers from both sides of the
aisle, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey released a 29-page strategy for overhauling
substance-abuse services in Massachusetts, proposing such ideas as "sober"
high schools for youths who are recovering addicts and increased spending
on both short-term detoxification and long-term treatment.

The strategy would allow school districts to impose drug testing on
students, Healey said, and calls for spending an additional $9.1 million to
make treatment programs available to addicts waiting for services. "We can
not afford to wait any longer to take action," said Healey, who has met
with officials in local cities and towns since last summer to discuss how
best to approach the state's worsening drug problem. Massachusetts is in
the top five among states with the highest alcohol- and drug-use rates,
Healey said, and abuse of heroin and OxyContin is growing dramatically.
While 82,000 people received drug-treatment services in the Bay State in
2004, another 40,000 are waiting for help, she said.

Elizabeth Funk, president of an industry group that represents
substance-abuse treatment providers, yesterday praised the administration
and the Legislature for recognizing the seriousness of the problem.
"Massachusetts is experiencing an epidemic of overdoses and deaths from
opiates such as OxyContin and heroin," said Funk, president of Mental
Health and Substance Abuse Corporations of Massachusetts Inc. "This report
reinforces the need to restore cuts made to substance-abuse services in
recent years and to fund new services."

The first step called for in the blueprint is the creation of a new council
that will bring together the 13 state agencies that provide substance-abuse
services. Each receives a portion of the $250 million the state spends each
year to prevent and treat substance abuse, but there is little coordination
among them, said Healey, who will chair the council.

The plan also calls for passage of $9.1 million in supplemental spending to
expand detox and treatment services, passage of a bill to crack down on the
manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine, and real-time tracking of
heroin overdoses to help identify regions with the greatest need. The
additional funding, proposed by the administration in January, would give
an additional 6,000 to 8,000 people access to treatment, Healey said. Salem
Schools Superintendent Herb Levine, a former Chelmsford High School
principal, made headlines earlier this year when he called for mandatory
drug testing of high-school students in his community, and yesterday said
such screening would go a long way toward preventing drug addiction. Levine
said his son, who became addicted to OxyContin in high school, believes
drug testing would have scared him away from OxyContin because it would
have risked his ability to play baseball and his family would have found out.

"He says very clearly that had student drug testing been around in his very
early experimentation, he never would have gotten to OxyContin," Levine
said. Rep. Jennifer Flanagan, D-Leominster, a member of the Legislature's
newly created Mental Health & Substance Abuse Committee, said for too long,
parents, educators and public officials have been reluctant to discuss the
growing problem. The issue, she said, crosses party lines.

"You can't talk about politics and talk about issues like gang violence,
domestic violence, and drug abuse," Flanagan said.