Post-Riot Drug Plan Criticized as Misguided

In response to the riots, the federal government has earmarked about $800,000 in special drug funds to treat “recreational” heroin users in Los Angeles County, emphasizing experimental treatments such as acupuncture.

But drug treatment professionals and county officials say the effort is misguided because it mainly targets new, typically white-collar users who smoke or snort heroin.

“The program has absolutely nothing to do with civil unrest in South-Central Los Angeles,” said Robert Reynolds, an expert on alcohol and drug treatment who is associate director of the statewide nonprofit Trauma Foundation.

“It’s somebody in Washington, D.C., trying to decide what the needs are in Los Angles,” Reynolds said. “The arrogance is absolutely astounding.”

Not a single treatment program based in riot-torn areas of Los Angeles sought the funds. Of the 1,200 providers in the county who were invited to apply, only four submitted bids by last week’s deadline--and they are headquartered in Beverly Hills, Tarzana, Glendale and San Francisco.

Only one bidder has clinics that serve South Los Angeles; two have proposed setting up clinics there.

The money generated little interest, according to drug treatment providers, because the federal government attached “ridiculous” strings to the funds.

“You shouldn’t take the only available money for detoxification and earmark it for non-intravenous drug users using a highly suspect treatment methodology . . . and then claim you are trying alleviate city violence,” said one bidder, Bill Wilson, who estimates that heroin sniffers make up about 2% of his clientele. “This is bizarre.”

Federal drug officials said Los Angeles treatment agencies were free to tailor their funding applications to suit the needs of their communities. However, Lisa Scheckel, deputy director of the federal Office of Treatment Improvement, acknowledged that this may not have been made clear to prospective bidders.

Rochelle D. Ventura, head of the county’s alcohol and drug program administration, said she is delighted that federal drug officials are sending additional money to Los Angeles but questioned the relevance of a program that targets casual heroin users.

“It’s not that it’s not a good thing to do,” Ventura said. “It’s just that it’s not one of our highest priorities.

“If we were to list our 10 greatest needs, it would not even fall into that category,” she said, noting that the county hot line has received only one call from a heroin snorter seeking services in recent months.

Los Angeles County has an estimated 200,000 heroin users, compared to about 400,000 cocaine users, according to the UCLA Drug Abuse Research Center.

Ventura’s office is selecting the bidder whose proposal will be forwarded to federal drug officials for funding, starting in October.

The federal government is aiming the money at outpatient programs that would use novel detoxification methods such as acupuncture and experimental drugs instead of traditional methadone treatments.

Casual users, as opposed to longtime addicts, are targeted, especially those who “snort, sniff or smoke heroin,” according to a letter that county officials sent providers in May alerting them to funds made available after the civil unrest.

“We were going to bid,” said Bruce Duncan, who has run a methadone clinic at 11427 S. Avalon in South Los Angeles for many years. But as he learned more about the federal program requirements, Duncan said he concluded “it was all smoke.” Only about 10 of the 500 addicts he treats are heroin snorters or smokers; the rest are intravenous users.

Barbara Cusucci, who runs the Cornerstone methadone clinic in Pico-Rivera, where indigent addicts face a four-month wait for treatment, said she was interested in applying for the additional federal detoxification money until she “read the fine print.”

“I wondered: ‘Why are we (the federal government) spending money on this?’ ” Cusucci said, adding that heroin sniffers are rare.

Dr. Lianne Audette, director of Turnabout in Santa Monica, which uses acupuncture to treat heroin addicts, said heroin sniffing and smoking are not plaguing the inner city. “Heroin sniffing is all white collar, or light blue collar.”

Some of those bidding for the money also voiced puzzlement about the program’s objectives.

“It is so misguided,” said Wilson, a corporate analyst at the Glendale-based Western Pacific Medical Corp. He has proposed running the new federal program out of seven methadone clinics in Los Angeles County. None are in South Los Angeles.

He said it is ironic that while the federal government is spending money on an esoteric program, the state is on the verge of dealing a major blow to mainstream programs. Gov. Pete Wilson has proposed terminating Medi-Cal funding for programs that use methadone to detoxify heroin addicts. These are in such demand that indigent addicts face an average wait of about six months.

Maury Weiner, director of the Tarzana Treatment Center, said he bid for the federal funds but has proposed treating all new heroin users, not just heroin snorters and sniffers, at one central location--in Tarzana.

“Targeting only people on the basis strictly of sniffing and snorting might just result in waiting a year for somebody to show up” for treatment, he said. His program would draw people from all over the county, but the commute might deter some South Los Angeles residents from using it.

Officials at the San Francisco-based California Detoxification Programs submitted a bid to operate the new detoxification program at the company’s four Los Angeles clinics, including two in riot-torn areas.

The final bidder is the Beverly Hills-based research group Matrix Institutes on Addiction, which has proposed running the new program out of five clinics, including two in riot areas.

Top federal drug officials visited Los Angeles several weeks ago to “look at the treatment infrastructure” and determine how additional federal drug funds could be used to alleviate “the causes and symptoms of socioeconomic dysfunction,” Scheckel said.

In addition to funding the new heroin program in Los Angeles, the Office of Treatment Improvement has proposed setting aside $1 million “to assist in the rebuilding of the social and community fabric” by expanding drug programs for juvenile offenders in Los Angeles County.

The heroin program was designed as a response to an “imminent public health threat” posed by an upswing in heroin use in several Eastern cities, particularly an increase in heroin sniffers, Scheckel said.

At first about $5 million was set aside to serve these cities. But after the riots, Scheckel said, officials decided to set aside about $800,000 for Los Angeles detoxification programs “due to the civil disturbances there.”

Scheckel said Los Angeles was among the top 20 cities in the nation that have experienced an increase in the number of hospital emergency room incidents involving heroin.

However, researchers at UCLA and the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs said they have seen no recent increase in heroin use in Los Angeles County.

M. Douglas Anglin, director of UCLA’s Drug Abuse Research Group, said heroin use has been stable and criticized federal officials for directing valuable resources to a program based on a “speculative hypothesis” that more people are sniffing and smoking heroin instead of injecting it.

“This is, in a way, ridiculous,” he said.