FREE RIDE IS OVER FOR KID DRUG USERS

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The Bloomberg administration is eliminating a long-standing city policy of
putting drug-addicted teenagers from better-off families on welfare to pay
for their long-term residential treatment, The Post has learned.

The city Human Resources Administration has acknowledged that the unusual
practice of putting 2,000 adolescents a year on the dole for treatment -
without considering their families' income - violates existing welfare laws
that limit such public assistance to the needy.

Under the decades-long practice, drug-treatment centers admitted the teens
into the program and even submitted on their behalf the paperwork to
qualify them for public assistance.

The drug-treatment centers then directly received the public- assistance
dollars - up to $1,000 a month per patient for food and shelter - from HRA
to cover the patient's costs.

But from now on, HRA officials - under pressure from Albany - will screen
and interview all applicants and their families to determine if they're
eligible for public assistance.

"We're doing what the law tells us to do," HRA spokesman Carl Strange said.

HRA officials stressed that adolescents from families that qualify as needy
will continue to get "safety net" payments for residential drug treatment.
Those who don't, won't.

Drug-treatment providers admit that many of their patients will no longer
be eligible for welfare, and complained that working-class families won't
be able to afford the $11,000 annual cost.

Camelot Counseling Centers of Staten Island last year treated 105
adolescents in its residential program - all of whom received public
assistance to pay for the service.

But Camelot Director Luke Nasta said he found only 12 of those teens would
have qualified for welfare benefits under the stricter welfare policy.

"I'd say 80 percent or more would be deterred from the financial
obligations if they had to pay," Nasta said.

One parent - a city worker whose 17-year-old son is enrolled in Camelot
after marijuana use and an arrest - said she would never be able to afford
the payments now covered by public assistance.

"I'm a single mother with two children," she said.

Private insurance provides up to 28 days of coverage for hospital and
residential stays.

Providers and parents said Albany or the city should put up the estimated
$4 million to $5 million to cover the teens who will no longer qualify for
welfare. They said that denying treatment will cost the state much more
when cocaine and heroin addicts run afoul of the law and end up in costlier
youth-detention facilities or jail.