QUESTIONS ABOUT FAITH-BASED DRUG TREATMENT

PRESIDENT BUSH found a predictably enthusiastic audience in Nashville this
week when he promoted his faith-based approach to providing social services
before an audience of religious broadcasters. But in more-secular circles,
that approach continues to pose both practical and constitutional issues.

In his State of the Union message last month, Bush proposed spending $600
million over the next three years on vouchers that 100,000 addicts could use
to seek drug treatment, either in secular or religious programs. He said
this week that faith-based programs "have a capacity to change heart, and
thereby change habit."

In Memphis as in many other communities, a convicted drug offender often
must agree to long-term substance abuse treatment to avoid jail. That's
appropriate, because mandatory treatment regimens have been shown to curb
repeat offenses and to save tax dollars that otherwise would be spent on
drug-related law enforcement and incarceration.

Bush administration officials say that because individuals, not
institutions, would get the voucher aid, the constitutional principle that
maintains a separation of church and state would not be violated. But the
"choice" the President offers between secular and religious drug treatment
may not be quite as free as he asserts.

Even as his budget proposal includes money for the treatment vouchers, Bush
seeks to cut funding substantially for drug treatment programs run by
government agencies. Many of those programs already are turning away
addicted clients because of a lack of resources.

If these trends persist, religious programs may become the only realistic
option in many cases for long-term substance abuse treatment. That isn't a
choice.

The nature of treatment offered by church-run programs also requires
examination before tax dollars are put behind it. Often such programs define
addiction as a sin rather than an illness, and define recovery more in terms
of religious conversion than effective medical care. Thus definitions and
reported rates of "success" also may vary between secular and spiritually
based programs.

The administrator of a faith-based program in Memphis said he would be wary
of accepting federal money if it were "to compromise the essence of our
message: that your life can be changed through a relationship with God."

The director of another local faith-based program told The Commercial
Appeal: "We would not downplay the Christian aspect because that is what
works for us." Other faith-based providers expressed understandable
skepticism that they would ever see much, if any, of the promised federal
aid, and said they were apprehensive about what the government would demand
in return.

Counselors in faith-based programs may lack formal training and education
and substantial professional experience in providing drug treatment. The
President's voucher proposal would not require these things; the
administration says the point of the faith-based approach is to avoid
imposing excessive bureaucratic burdens on religious programs.

But Tennessee taxpayers know from bitter experience with the
state-subsidized day care program what can happen when government regulators
fail to monitor private providers of social services adequately. A
reasonable degree of public oversight and accountability is necessary.

Faith-based groups, in Memphis and elsewhere, do an indispensable job of
complementing the public sector in providing social services. The President
is surely correct to encourage their good work, and to assert as he did this
week that "faith (can) help solve this nation's deepest problems."

But these groups should not be expected essentially to supplant the
necessary responsibility of government in such matters as drug treatment.
And that should not be the strategy, overt or covert, of the administration.