Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 3, 1990 TAG: 9006040197
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Two or three years ago, there was virtually no crack in Roanoke. Today, nurseries are beginning to confront crack-babies addicted because their mothers are. Trappings of the drug culture, such as ever-more-lethal guns, are spreading through the valley.
Every new drug seizure adds a notch to law enforcement's belt, yet hints at a burgeoning trade going largely undetected. The well-publicized seizures and mounting arrest statistics are, in any case, a dubious way to keep score in this war.
Officials insist crack addiction in the Roanoke Valley is not a crisis of epidemic proportion. What they seem to be saying is that it isn't yet so.
Well-coordinated law-enforcement crackdowns last summer slowed trafficking and stemmed what could have become a crisis. But they did not wipe out the crack. The drug trade has proved resilient to efforts that drive up prices, thus profits. It appears to be on the rebound now.
Crack is only part of the addiction problem, of course; alcohol and cigarettes over the years have caused far more damage and continue to. Still, crack, because it is so cheap and addictive and connected to crime, is especially dangerous now.
Arrest statistics would suggest the problem is confined mostly to Northwest Roanoke and smugglers from New York City. In fact, it threatens the entire region.
That threat is not being met with sufficient resources. In Roanoke's drug war, as with the nation's, no quick victory is available, no weapon powerful enough to prompt unconditional surrender. Cops and courts are essential, but on the streets they are increasingly outmanned and outgunned.
Education, prevention and treatment are surer weapons. As a study by the Roanoke City Manager's Drug Strategy Task Force noted last December: "Prevention, enforcement and treatment can be compared to the legs on a three-legged stool. Without one of the legs, the stool will fall."
In Roanoke, the stool is falling. This community is far ahead of many localities in recognizing and addressing the drug menace. The so-called Caribbean Sunset crackdown last year and the work of the city manager's task force demonstrate the energy and widespread commitment given to the effort. Even so, treatment and prevention are lagging.
The city has, for example, no long-term residential rehabilitation programs available for adolescents. That's outrageous.
Meanwhile, many people seeking treatment are falling through the cracks because they can't afford help or don't have insurance.
Inability to pay isn't limited to Roanoke's poorer neighborhoods. Working people with long employment histories who come from stable communities lose or change jobs because of chemical dependency, then find they are without insurance to cover treatment costs.
Drug rehabilitation, if slow and uncertain, still in many cases offers the best way out of the addiction quagmire. In times of scarce funds, it also is the most cost-effective way. A recent study confirms this.
As part of a long-term federally funded analysis of treatment effectiveness, the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina tracked more than 10,000 drug users in outpatient and residential treatment programs over five years. The results suggest the benefits of providing treatment substantially outweigh the costs.
That crime-related costs decline with treatment should come as no surprise. Last year, local law-enforcement officials estimated that 85 percent of crimes committed in Roanoke City were drug-related.
Drug rehabilitation costs dearly, but so does the housing of offenders in jail or prison until they're released to commit more crimes.
Other costs also decline with treatment. No fancy analysis is needed to suggest, for example, that getting a pregnant crack addict into treatment will prove cheaper than caring for her addicted baby from the tortured cradle through disabled childhood to an early grave.
If substance abusers admit to needing help, that can be half the battle. Or, rather, should be. Defeatism pervades the fact that not everyone motivated enough to seek treatment can get it.
Local law-enforcement efforts need, if anything, more support, and their successes should be celebrated. Still, until every Roanoke Valley drug abuser who comes forward and asks for help can receive treatment without long delay, the war against drugs here as elsewhere must be considered less than serious.
Until then, street crime will continue to spread, the drug culture will tear at Roanoke's moral and social fabric, and no amount of arrests at the airport or crackdowns in the city will hide the despair and decay that addiction has wrought.
A strategy of filling jails with those easiest to capture and convict recalls nothing so much as another failed war, when body counts became ends unto themselves and victory on the battlefield slipped away.
by CNB