Proposed Cut in Drug Treatment Assailed

Officials are considering a cut of up to 28% in the budget for drug treatment programs in Los Angeles County at a time when treatment is believed crucial to slowing the spread of AIDS and the wait for admission to residential programs is already 21 weeks.

Under the tentative proposal by the chief administrative officer, the county would take $6.75 million out of the budget for treatment and use it instead to expand drug-abuse prevention programs run by law enforcement agencies in schools.

Department of Health Services officials say the transfer would reduce by 7,000 the 22,000 annual admissions to county-funded treatment programs. County-funded treatment services are already 30% below the 1981-82 level as a result of federal budget cuts, they say.

On Friday, the budget proposal came under heavy fire.

The county Commission on AIDS voted unanimously to express its opposition to the shift of funds by joining another county board, the Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Commission, in urging the supervisors not to reallocate any treatment money.

“The information from the (county) Drug Abuse Program Office indicates we could as much as double the waiting time if this money is taken away,” said Dr. Thomas Horowitz, an AIDS commission member, at the group’s monthly meeting. “We feel we should take a stand.”

The budget transfer proposal, made by the county’s chief administrative officer at the request of the supervisors, is to be taken up Tuesday by the supervisors and, if approved, will go into effect July 1. The board has expressed an interest in increasing the county’s emphasis on drug abuse education and prevention.

Health Director Robert Gates is expected to urge the supervisors to settle for a smaller, $600,000 shift of funds. That would cover the cost of extending the county sheriff’s and city Police Department’s programs to 10 additional school districts, said an official in the county chief administrator’s office.

Street Outreach Endorsed

Also at its meeting Friday, the AIDS commission endorsed the health department’s proposal to launch a program of so-called street outreach to educate the county’s estimated 80,000 to 120,000 intravenous drug users about the risks of contracting and spreading the AIDS virus.

The commission emphasized that the program should include distribution of condoms as well as bleach for sterilizing hypodermic needles. The supervisors, several of whom oppose distributing bleach and condoms, would have to approve the program.

One commission member, Eric Rofes, argued that the commission had given insufficient consideration to the county’s giving away clean needles, a controversial approach used abroad and set to begin for the first time in the United States next month in Portland, Ore.

“I’m feeling like the role of this commission is being compromised a lot by our concerns about how we’re going to be considered by the Board of Supervisors,” said Rofes, whose needle proposal was sent back for a second time to a commission task force for study.