New Center Plans Overview of Substance Abuse : Drug war: Project will unite experts from several disciplines to study effects in diverse areas of society.

Formation of the nation’s first comprehensive center to study how substance abuse affects society will be announced in New York today with support from a consortium of foundations, banks and businesses.

The center, affiliated with Columbia University, will bring together all professional disciplines of the university’s graduate schools and faculties.

It will be headed by Joseph A. Califano Jr., former secretary of health, education and welfare in the Jimmy Carter Administration, and supported by an $8-million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropic organization that works to improve health services in the United States. The grant is the largest commitment of its kind in the 20-year history of the foundation.

Michael I. Sovern, Columbia’s president, said the university will become the nation’s first to commit such diverse resources to combatting substance abuse and addiction--including pills, alcohol and tobacco.

The mandate of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University is broad.

The center will assemble experts in medicine, law enforcement, business, the legal system, economics, communications, teaching, social work and the clergy. They will work to determine and combat the impact of substance abuse on the judicial system, housing, prisons, health care, education, businesses, families, the viability of urban life and other areas of society.

Such broad scope is designed to coordinate often fragmented thinking and planning about substance abuse.

“The object is to get under one roof all substance abuse, all the skills needed to deal with it . . . and to deal with it in every aspect of our society,” Califano said in an interview. “The economic cost is at least $300 billion a year. We pay for it in worker productivity, damaged property, in crime, in health care costs, in homelessness and the public costs to deal with it.

“Two of the biggest differences between Watts and the (latest Los Angeles) riots . . . are drugs and guns, and they go hand in hand. You can’t begin to clean up those areas without dealing with drugs and guns,” said Califano, who will leave his law practice to become the center’s full-time president.

In remarks prepared for a news conference in Manhattan today announcing the center’s creation, the veteran New York and Washington lawyer noted that CASA springs from the conviction that the nation will be unable to cope with a host of problems including urban unrest, soaring health care costs and access, AIDS, homelessness, a collapsing court system and corporate competitiveness unless it can deal with addiction and substance abuse.

“CASA is a recognition by several foundations and corporations that if our nation is going to put first things first, substance abuse and addiction belong at the top of the list,” Califano said.

CASA initially will seek to identify the costs of various forms of substance abuse throughout society, concentrating first on Medicaid and the deterioration of the nation’s court system. A national conference on substance abuse costs is being planned for next year.

Rather than conduct basic biomedical research or run treatment and prevention programs, the center will evaluate current substance abuse strategies and design and test new efforts. The aim is to find new programs and techniques that work, and disseminate information about them to people on the front lines of treatment and prevention.

A key aim is to bring attention on addiction and substance abuse into the mainstream of medical, social and economic research and policy and raise the level of resources committed to the problem.

CASA’s executive vice president and medical director will be Dr. Herbert D. Kleber, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia. Until recently, Kleber was the top White House official charged with reducing the demand for drugs. One of CASA’s first programs will concentrate on former addicts who have been released from prison after dealing with their drug problems.

“They are drug and alcohol free. The aim is to provide a system of support--employment, social services, Alcoholics Anonymous, trained probation officers so that they can get through the first couple of years without relapsing,” said Califano, who will be appointed a professor of public health policy at Columbia.

Another effort will be to mount demonstration programs for high-risk youth, ages 11 to 13. The center will examine the role of private insurance in shaping substance abuse treatment and prevention as well as encourage nurses, teachers and physicians to focus more comprehensively on the problem.

In addition to the grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CASA has received funds from the Carnegie Corp. and major businesses, including Automatic Data Processing, Chase Manhattan Bank, Chemical Bank, Chrysler Corp., Coca-Cola, Walt Disney Co., Ford Motor Co., K mart Corp., Mobil Corp, NYNEX Corp., Primerica Corp., Reliance Group Holdings, Safeway Stores and Warnaco.

The center also has received more than $5 million from the Annie E. Casey, Ford, Robert Wood Johnson, Pew and Rockefeller foundations for programs concentrating on substance abuse and poverty.