No Part in the Plan

Irvine Councilman Dave Baker was concerned about the quality of life in his community and about how families were coping with the threat of substance abuse. So was the City Council, which has officially adopted as a city priority the eradication of substance abuse.

At Baker’s urging, the council will also soon consider, as a priority item in the new city budget, a $192,000 allocation to fund an anti-drug program.

Irvine is a young community, and drug abuse is disturbingly prevalent among young people. Surveys have shown how real the problem is in Irvine.

According to one report from a special city task force created by the council to help deal with substance abuse, about two out of every three seventh-graders had used alcohol by the fourth grade; two out of every five 11th-graders and one out of every five ninth-graders are using alcohol once a week, and more than one out of every 10 11th-graders (13.5%) uses alcohol or drugs every day.

And drugs are definitely available to teen-agers on the streets of Irvine. In 1981 Irvine police reported seizing $74,500 worth of illegal drugs. By last year the value of illegal drugs seized in Irvine had skyrocketed to $1.4 million.

The $192,000 that the council will try to find in its new budget is earmarked for a police program patterned after Project DARE, the Los Angeles Police Department’s anti-drug program for schoolchildren, and for an office to help coordinate the anti-drug efforts in the city and to serve as a one-spot referral service for all programs.

The city budget is tight, but simply adopting an official city policy of eradicating substance abuse does not go far enough. The $192,000 must also be provided to translate the city’s resolution into a real program. Irvine is a planned community. Teen-age drug use has no part in that plan.