
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 8, 1991                   TAG: 9104090496
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A/8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PUNISHMENT ISN'T ENOUGH

CALLS FOR anti-drug crusades typically center on punishment: "zero tolerance," mandatory prison sentences, confiscation of property, the death penalty for "drug kingpins," etc., etc. Less often is there talk of fighting drugs by treating drug abusers and, even better, preventing such abuse in the first place.

With its plea last week not only to expand local drug-treatment programs but also to maintain the level of services previously available, the treatment committee of the Roanoke Drug and Alcohol Abuse Council has refocused public attention on the non-punitive component that must be part of any successful fight against drugs.

The committee warns of "an impending crisis" in the valley, and is persuasive in outlining its reasons for the warning. The most urgent needs are for a public-funded inpatient facility for adolescent abusers, and a halfway house for recovering males. The committee also cites danger signs of diminishing resources for existing efforts, including changes in insurance coverage and cutbacks in outpatient facilities.

Perhaps the panel's most important point, however, is that little can be accomplished without strong public involvement.

Unquestionably, law enforcement is a key ingredient in the fight against drugs. A combination of treatment and punishment for the same individual is sometimes the most effective method in dealing with drug dependency. But any anti-drug effort that makes punishment its near-exclusive focus, at the expense of treatment and prevention programs, is doomed to failure.

That is so in part because drug trafficking will continue to flourish, regardless of the best efforts of law-enforcement agencies, so long as it is profitable. And it will continue to be profitable so long as there are drug-dependent customers eager to purchase the dealers' wares.

Moreover, the chief drug-abuse problem continues to be alcohol, a legal substance. With alcohol, law enforcement is applicable only on the margin: sales to minors, drunken driving and the like. Many users of illegal drugs are "cross-addicted" to alcohol. They are, however, even less likely to acknowledge their addiction to alcohol than to, say, cocaine - even though abuse of illicit drugs is harder to detect.

The denial so characteristic of substance abusers is often seen among those around them, including their parents and employers. To call for community involvement in drug-abuse treatment and prevention is in part simply to call on parents and employers, schools and churches, to admit drug abuse when they see it and to seek help for the abuser.

But community involvement implies other points, too. It implies taxpayer willingness to spend public funds on drug programs, corporate willingness to be tough but fair with drug-dependent employees, voter willingness to support the election of political officials who understand the limits of the punitive-only approach.

The short-term cost of doing little to treat drug dependency may seem minimal. But the long-term cost - both direct (as in the costs of imprisoning those involved in drug-law violations and alcohol-related violence) and indirect (as in lost productivity) - is huge. And the intangible cost, the cost to the human spirit of a drug-wasted life, is even larger.

by CNB