A DIALOGUE ON DRUGS

A crowd of more than 200 attended a Jamestown forum Wednesday night on
the scourge of crack cocaine in Guilford County. That's good news in and of
itself.

Even better news are some possible solutions that already have emerged
from the conversation. The Guilford County Coalition on Substance
Abuse stepped forward as a community champion against crack cocaine
even before it convened the forum on the campus of GTCC.

The coalition, which consists of 43 different organizations, is
uniquely equipped to tackle the problem.

Experts and local leaders expressed strong sentiment Wednesday night
that a long-term treatment center is a key solution to breaking the
cycle of addiction, crime, arrests and resumed addiction. Because
crack requires less detoxification time than other addictions such as
alcohol, addicts typically are released too soon to receive enough
counseling and other support to break their dependence on the highly
destructive street drug.

Other communities have had success with longer-term facilities that
combine treatment with job training and counseling. In Guilford
County, one option might be to expand the county-owned Alcohol and
Drug Services treatment facility on Wendover Avenue.

How to pay for it?

Greensboro Mayor Keith Holliday told a News & Record reporter after
the forum that he would support a countywide bond referendum for such
a facility.

County Commissioner Skip Alston agreed that an investment in such a
facility would be money well spent.

"We talk about spending $100 million on a new jail," Alston said,
noting the number of addicts who crowd the jails. "But 80 percent of
the inmates are there because of a disease."

Alston went on to say that he would prefer that the county invest in a
drug treatment facility as opposed to a new jail.

Practically speaking, however, we don't have that choice anymore. The
need for a new jail has been long overdue. But an investment in a
crack treatment facility could help ease future jail space crunches.

Then there's the question of how to fund the additional treatment
itself.

"You could build a $10 million facility, but if you don't have a way
to pay for the treatment," Wally Harrelson, who heads Guilford
County's Public Defender's Office, said in an interview Thursday,
"it's like butting your head against a brick wall."

Harrelson can offer personal insight into the struggles of addiction.
He has himself been a recovering alcoholic for 21 years. And he is
right.

One partial solution is a model in Durham, where Triangle Residential
Options for Substance Abusers, or TROSA, provides residential
treatment for drug abusers but defrays more than half the cost by
having patients work for businesses that it owns, including a catering
company and a commercial moving company.

There will need to be more meetings and more conversations. For every
answer there is a new question.

But we have to begin somewhere. And Wednesday's forum was as good a
place as any.