Kicking at the Habit

Having his ranking aides take drug tests may make President Reagan feel better about the caliber of advice he is getting. But it won’t do anything for an estimated 74,000 wretches in Los Angeles County who are addicted to heroin and getting no help with their habits except from drug pushers.

It will take money and treatment programs expanded out of humanity rather than hysteria to help those addicts and the thousands more who get hooked every month on cocaine. A presidential spokesman says that Reagan might squeeze some money into the budget in 15 months. It might even be enough to restore a 36% reduction in recent years of federal funds available to the county for drug treatment. The cuts clearly help account for the fact that county facilities have to turn away addicts who want help. The waiting lists are two or three months long, and growing.

Having a President express concern about drugs is better than having a President yawn over the problem, and Reagan’s platitudes about a drug-free society or his proclamation of a Pearl Harbor for drug pushers may push some susceptible people away from the edge of addiction.

Law enforcement has attacked the heroin trade in Asia and watched it slip away to Turkey, laid siege to cocaine peddlers in Florida and seen them pop up in California often enough to know that while the demand persists supplies will keep coming. The only sure way to dry up demand is to dry out the addicted. Better law enforcement and more courts could help in that job, but in the end it will be up to physicians and therapists in treatment centers. It will take a lot of treatment centers and a lot of money. And until both are provided, the President’s drug crusade will be just talk.