BLODGETT CALLS FOR MORE MONEY FOR DRUG PREVENTION

BOSTON - Essex County District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett urged
lawmakers yesterday to fund more drug prevention programs because he is
"concerned and somewhat scared" about the rise in addiction to opiates. "We
have felt the breeze, but we know the hurricane is coming," he told members
of the Joint Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse. In an
interview afterward, he said that his office's effort to work with schools
has been hurt by the state's failure to increase overall funding in recent
years. He did not specify a dollar amount but said "more has to be
committed to make this (prevention) a constant message."

Blodgett said that in the last two years 170 people in Essex County have
been killed by opiates or a combination of opiates and alcohol. He noted
that many abusers start out with OxyContin and graduate to heroin. These
numbers could be reduced with more education, he said.

Interim Public Health Commissioner Paul Cote promised to present the
administration's plan for combating the rise of drug abuse later this
month. He presented data showing that Massachusetts has one of the longest
waiting lists in the country for treatment and has seen a steady rise of
fatal overdoses of opiates.

Lawmakers on the panel said they were eager to improve drug prevention and
treatment programs but made no specific promises.

North of Boston educators and drug abuse specialists warned in subsequent
interviews that further cuts in prevention programs would cause even faster
growth of opiate abuse.

Peabody High School Principal Patrick Larkin said it is more expensive to
treat older students with substance abuse problems than to encourage
younger students to avoid drugs.

Kevin Norton, president of CAB Health & Recovery Systems, said his
Danvers-based company has lost about $1 million in state funding to run
prevention programs since 2000. At one time, the company had 18 people
working on prevention programs and now it has one.

"When push comes to shove, the first thing to go is prevention," Norton
said. "Those programs have all but disappeared."

While the state has cut back, some communities stepped in. The Healthy
Gloucester Initiative, a program of that city's Health Department, sends
specialists into schools to talk about the adverse effects of drug use. The
city contracts with Beverly-based Health and Education Services Inc., which
runs similar programs in several North of Boston communities. "We've lost a
significant amount of state funding but we have gotten more money from the
federal government and some from localities," said Phil Salzman, the firm's
vice president.