Drug Treatment

The county commissioners are looking at the Jones Building at Springfield Hospital Center for a residential drug treatment program, instead of the decrepit Henryton Hospital in Marriottsville. Ralph Green, county director of permits and inspections, told the commissioners yesterday that the Jones Building, constructed in 1948, appeared to be the least costly option for a treatment center among three buildings under consideration - the others were Henryton and another building at Springfield.

PIKESVILLE WILL not be sending out the Welcome Wagon. Drug-treatment advocates want to open methadone clinics in the Reisterstown Road corridor of northwest Baltimore County, and the community goes ballistic. Who could blame them? The shadow of drug abuse was supposed to end at the city-county line, instead of landing right on people's sunlit suburban doorsteps. Instead, in recent weeks, the specter of two methadone clinics within a half-mile of each other has been raised, and County Council members and residents have responded with anger, with political maneuvering and, not to be overlooked, much rhetoric that is beside the point.

BECAUSE DRUG ABUSE has soured the quality of life in Baltimore, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has ordered three agencies to take $5 million out of their combined budgets to pay for more drug treatment slots in the city. That is the right thing to do. Indeed, the mayor and the Baltimore legislative delegation should press Gov. Parris N. Glendening for a supplemental appropriation to match the city's effort and expand this important initiative.City residents have long argued that most of the lawlessness making some neighborhoods unattractive to new businesses and residents stems from addicts hustling enough cash for a fix or drug dealers fighting over who can sell dope where.

A former prison guard has pleaded guilty to trying to deliver heroin to an inmate at a facility that specializes in drug treatment. Frederick Leon Burchfield, 29, of the 4000 block of Woodridge Road in Baltimore, is scheduled to be sentenced in October in Howard County Circuit Court for possession with intent to distribute the drug, and for attempting to smuggle it to an inmate. Burchfield entered his plea Thursday. Police said Burchfield was arrested April 6 on U.S. 1 when he picked up six packets of heroin and a $75 delivery fee from an undercover officer posing as a drug dealer.

Mayor Martin O'Malley introduced two bills yesterday to the City Council that would take a second crack at making it easier for drug treatment programs to open in Baltimore without legislative oversight. O'Malley sponsored the bills last year, but they were held up in committee by council members under pressure from residents opposed to the idea. Supporters say the two bills simplify an approval process that has kept drug-treatment facilities from opening and kept them concentrated in neighborhoods without the sway to fight them.

THERE IS some good news in these dismal days: Baltimore's shockingly Third World-like health statistics have begun to improve. Drug-related emergency room visits, which were the nation's highest, are down 19 percent. Record-high infant mortality rates have dropped significantly. Tuberculosis rates, teen births and all types of venereal diseases also have decreased. "Something different is going on in Baltimore," says Health Commissioner Peter L. Beilenson. He thinks the improving trend is due to more effective drug treatment.

MOST PEOPLE in jail have a drug addiction problem. While the offenses they are convicted of may not seem drug-related, it's often an underlying cause. So what better way to treat addictions than in the structured, regimented confinement of the jail?Carroll County's new addition to its Detention Center addresses that need with a segregated 16-bed cellblock dedicated to treating inmate-addicts. The county health department will run the rehabilitation program, affording continuity to outside follow-up treatment.

Anne Arundel County police officers whisked Wanda R. Hall to an unidentified drug treatment center in Virginia yesterday after a circuit judge cut short her 14-year prison sentence and approved what prosecutors termed a "necessary evil."Hall, 35, of Annapolis, swapped her testimony against a murder defendant for prosecutors' support of her bid to leave prison after serving about 3 1/2 years for her part in the killing."Cases of this nature never leave me comfortable," Judge Ronald A. Silkworth told Hall, who testified in February that she drove a borrowed car while Richard E. Janey, 34, stabbed another woman to death in the back seat in December 1994.

A 20-year-old Finksburg man was sentenced yesterday to 60 days in the county jail for twice escaping from court-ordered substance abuse treatment centers, court records show. Daniel B. Kowalski of the 1700 block of Tank Road pleaded not guilty but agreed to accept the prosecutor's version of what happened. Circuit Judge Luke K. Burns Jr. found Kowalski guilty of walking away from Teen Challenge in Baltimore on Feb. 15, 1999, and from the Alice Olson House in Frederick on Jan. 19. Burns imposed 30-day consecutive jail sentences for each charge and suspended the balance of previously imposed terms for various burglary and theft convictions, court records show.

City Health Commissioner Dr. Peter L. Beilenson is at odds with Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and his staff over a claim that the governor has increased drug treatment funds for Baltimore. Both sides agree that the city will get about $48.7 million from the state to treat drug addicts this fiscal year, which began last month. Both sides agree on how they got to that amount: the governor took $1.2 million from the city's drug treatment programs last year, then pledged to give that money back to the city in this year's budget, and last week decided to give back only half of it, or $600,000.