Drug Addicts

Most of the drug dealers I've met are drug addicts. They would not fit the TV version of a drug dealer: Bling-bling king, all smooth from drinking Remy and smoking weed, cruising the `hood in a shiny black Navigator, scooping up cash as he goes. The ones I've met do not own or lease motor vehicles; many of them live with their mothers. They sell drugs of the same variety they use. They do not make much money, and some of them wind up dead because they may have snorted dope they were supposed to sell or failed to pay their debts.

YESTERDAY morning, in just 70 minutes of docket in the District Court of Maryland, a citizen could see and appreciate the kind of social and systemic conditions that keep the arteries of criminal justice clogged. I hate to say we've seen it all before, but we've seen it all before - drug addicts from the city, drug addicts from the suburbs, cops pulled off street duty for relatively minor cases, cases dismissed because cops or other witnesses don't show up. One defendant, his case a perfect candidate for expeditious treatment in District Court, asked for a jury trial in Circuit Court only because he showed up without an attorney and didn't know what else to do.I drop by the Edward F. Borgerding District Court Building on Wabash Avenue, Judge Jack I. Lesser presiding, about 9:40 a.m.The first case I catch is that of Defendant Williams.

YOU'VE PROBABLY heard about the racist sterilization program that bribes addled drug addicts -- primarily black women -- to submit to birth control in exchange for a free fix.Well, not quite. Yet one might infer this from a story by the Associated Press that recently appeared in newspapers across the country.The story told of a privately funded California program "making its way across the country" (like the plague?) that "pays $200 to drug-addicted women to get their tubes tied," drawing "the wrath of critics who call it shortsighted, racist and a source of drug money for users."

Standing on one of Baltimore's most infamous street corners yesterday, City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III held up a broom and pledged to sweep open-air drug markets out of the city.The mayoral candidate unveiled his plan to implement the zero-tolerance policing strategy in Baltimore that has aided other cities. The crime-fighting effort would be complemented by treatment on demand for the city's estimated 59,000 drug addicts, Bell said."This broom is going to be our symbol from here on out," Bell said.

Bel Air officials say they have nothing against group homes for drug addicts and alcoholics -- they just want to treat them the same as any other multifamily home.But lawyers for a company that runs five such group homes in Bel Air say they are different, and insist the difference gives them protection under federal housing law.Those clashing interpretations are at the center of a dispute that erupted last week over group homes in the Harford County town, which is debating legislation that would restrict group homes to areas zoned for high density.

Overshadowed by AIDS, a silent epidemic of hepatitis C is sweeping through Baltimore's population of intravenous drug users -- threatening many with liver failure and cancer decades after they were first infected.Recent studies by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health show that well over 90 percent of the city's addicts are infected with the virus. The rate among young addicts who are less than five years into drug use is 58 percent -- stark evidence of how rapidly this virus is traveling among people who share needles.

CHICAGO -- There is a controversy here because Barbara Harris in Anaheim, Calif., got tired of her telephone ringing. She says, "I just couldn't believe that my phone would ring every year and they would tell me she had had another baby."In a span of three years, Mrs. Harris, 47, and her husband adopted the four youngest of eight babies born to one drug-addicted woman. Her efforts to prevent the births of drug-addicted babies have provoked charges that she is a genocidal racist. She is an unlikely target: She is white, her husband and the adopted babies are African-American.

A spate of fires -- most set by arsonists, squatters or drug addicts -- has damaged or destroyed 36 vacant rowhouses in East Baltimore since March 1, a nearly one-home-a-day pace that frightens firefighters.Yesterday, Baltimore police said they had arrested three boys, including an 11-year-old, and charged them with setting fire to a string of houses on North Durham Street, forcing the last remaining resident on the block to flee.Police said the youngsters are responsible for setting fires that damaged six vacant rowhouses, five on one block that was targeted four separate times.

Baltimore Health Commissioner Peter L. Beilenson said yesterday that he wants to double the city's capacity to treat drug addicts and expand services for them -- but he needs about $20 million to do it."The system as it exists makes sense," Beilenson told 24 directors who primarily receive money from the city, state and federal government through the Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems Inc., the umbrella agency that oversees funding for the city's 39 publicly backed centers. "I do believe we can make positive changes."

Baltimore's health commissioner has proposed overhauling the city's drug treatment system -- including closing some of the 39 taxpayer-funded treatment centers -- to treat up to 8,000 more uninsured addicts annually.Commissioner Peter L. Beilenson said the moves would not require any increase in the $33 million treatment budget used to help 22,000 drug addicts a year in Baltimore. However, he said centers would close to expand the hours, number of beds and services at the remaining centers.

About 100 recovering drug addicts marched on City Hall yesterday to protest public funding cuts that will cripple a well-known recovery program. Chanting the name of the organization, I Can't We Can, they drew the attention of City Councilman Bernard "Jack" Young, who said he is powerless to help but "stands in solidarity." Other city employees stopped to watch the group pray and tell stories about addiction and survival. Al Moy?, who credits the program with his recovery from addiction, said lives and public safety are at risk if I Can't We Can closes its doors.

Christopher Nieto believes in Baltimore. His car has been broken into four times. They took his iPod, his Discman and the empty plastic suction cup that held his navigational device. They even stripped the rubber off his wiper blades. His former house in Pigtown was burglarized three times. They took two television sets, his suits, watches and two laptop computers. "I have absolutely nothing left of value anymore," he says. "I'm down to a pretty skeletal home life." Christopher Nieto also believes in his job. He is a public defender.

A Southwest Baltimore man who wrote notes, made threats and tried to arrange the poisoning of witnesses who were to testify at his murder trial pleaded guilty yesterday to murder and witness-intimidation charges and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Baltimore Circuit Judge Charles G. Bernstein acknowledged that Ray "Lucky" Williams' 30-year sentence, with all but nine years suspended, is "very, very lenient." Williams' previous trial ended with a hung jury, and the case against him was rife with difficulties common in Baltimore murder cases.

When friends recalled Marshall Shure yesterday, they compared him to Matlock, a folksy, down-home attorney who could lull people into thinking he was their friend while he was tearing their testimony apart. He could equally play the part of father confessor and social worker. Mr. Shure, an assistant state's attorney who prosecuted vagrancy, car theft, spouse beating and drug possession cases in Baltimore's neighborhood courts - mostly in the Southern District - died of lung cancer Wednesday at the Levindale Hebrew Center and Hospital.

Most of the drug dealers I've met are drug addicts. They would not fit the TV version of a drug dealer: Bling-bling king, all smooth from drinking Remy and smoking weed, cruising the `hood in a shiny black Navigator, scooping up cash as he goes. The ones I've met do not own or lease motor vehicles; many of them live with their mothers. They sell drugs of the same variety they use. They do not make much money, and some of them wind up dead because they may have snorted dope they were supposed to sell or failed to pay their debts.

You might think reaching for that cup of coffee or cigarette is a simple decision. But scientists believe the way we act to satisfy cravings involves a little-understood automated response - one we have no control over - and researchers in Baltimore are using brain scans to unlock its secrets. "If there's an automated component to craving, we really want to understand how it works," says Elliot Stein, director of the neuroimaging lab at the Bayview campus of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in East Baltimore.

Mayor Sheila Dixon is using academic research to support the city's request for expanded drug treatment, including $5 million in Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposed budget to improve access to buprenorphine, a prescription drug that requires less monitoring than methadone and also weans addicts off heroin. Quoting research by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County that Medicaid patients receiving drug treatment were "four times less likely" to be hospitalized than those without treatment, Dixon is urging legislators to back the governor's budget and legislation that would increase the state's cigarette tax by $1 a pack, revenue that could provide treatment for an additional 7,000 city residents annually.

Hoping to make a revolutionary treatment more available for heroin users, Baltimore officials are taking the unusual step of subsidizing a training program that could more than double the number of physicians permitted to prescribe a new medication to cure opiate addiction. Buprenorphine, commonly referred to as "bupe," is being used in place of methadone to wean addicts off heroin because it can be taken at home, is less prone to abuse and is easier to discontinue when the patient is ready.

Icalled the other day for an expanded attack on the drug addiction that fuels the drug trade that fuels the violence that fuels the decline - or at least delays the progress - of the quality of life in Baltimore. It's a burden on the entire metropolitan area, on the whole state. Drug addiction has been placed at the root of 80 percent of crime. It's the reason our prisons are filled. It's why we have neighborhood crime patrols, why our courts are crazy-busy. In many cases, drug addiction is at the root of family dysfunction, and family dysfunction - compounded by poverty, ignorance, unemployment - is at the root of the cycle of failure of children and schools.

Alittle more attention must be paid: Keith Harrison, The Sun's Police Officer of the Year for excellence in community service, has been deeply engaged in the effort to get drug dealers and drug addicts out of that miserable game. We kind of missed the story the other day when we reported on Harrison's selection from among dozens of nominees across Maryland. He's done more than "set up an office where citizens can talk privately to officers about their lives." Like street-corner missionaries, Harrison and his colleagues from the Baltimore Police Department's Get Out of the Game unit have been encouraging hard-core drug offenders to change their lives.