MORE SLOTS NEEDED FOR RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT

Beating drugs: City programs show promising results, but too many
addicts still cannot get in.

ALONG-AWAITED academic evaluation has confirmed what already was
obvious: The more effective Baltimore City's drug treatment programs
are, the more crime and fatal overdoses drop.

The evaluation, conducted by researchers from the University of
Maryland, Johns Hopkins University and Morgan State University, was
released last week. It reported a 79 percent success rate over a 12-
month period for methadone, a synthetic drug used to wean addicts from
heroin and cocaine.

Mere counseling was less than half that successful.

The results may be obvious, but they can only make a difference in
this city if the Baltimore Substance Abuse System (BSAS), which
oversees taxpayer-financed treatment programs, molds its policy to
reflect them.

Most immediately, that means boosting the number of residential
treatment slots in the city to break hardcore addicts' habits.

Already, half of Baltimore's 7,500 taxpayer-funded slots are in
programs that use methadone to treat heroin addicts. Various types of
counseling programs account for most of the balance.

But Baltimore for years has had only one major residential treatment
facility, Tuerk House, which has a paltry 75 beds. An additional
center will open in March in the Park Heights Avenue corridor, but its
124 beds are an insignificant improvement in a city that has the
nation's worst heroin problem. Some 55,000 adults here are estimated
to be addicted to drugs or alcohol.

While it's true that it's difficult to create more residential
treatment centers because many neighborhoods don't want them, there
are some encouraging signs of a turnaround in that attitude.

The Park Heights community, for example, supported the conversion of
the bankrupt Greenspring Nursing and Rehabilitation Center into a
residential treatment Center that will open soon. The community
realized that treatment offers the best hope for a turnaround in
addicts' personal lives.

This recognition must be shared more widely. Treatment offers promises
that jails, which have few meaningful anti-drug programs, cannot achieve.

On the menu of treatment options, Baltimore comes up way short when it
comes to residential treatment. This is a deficiency BSAS must rectify
with dispatch.