E-Mail This Article to a Friend HEALTHY ADDICTION Doing MOAR to fight drug abuse BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI

Talk of drugs and addiction certainly dominated the agenda at the "Resources for Recovery Forum" earlier this week. But the no-nonsense tone at the January 5 event, held by the Massachusetts Organization for Addiction Recovery (MOAR) at Jamaica Plain’s Faulkner Hospital, contrasted sharply with the near-hysterical invocation of "the children" that characterized the New England Anti-Drug Summit last fall (see "Baby Talk," News and Features, October 17, 2003).

Here, in fact, there was no mention of "the children." Instead, the speakers — a virtual who’s who of substance-abuse experts, including Boston Public Health Commission director John Auerbach; Michael Botticelli, the commissioner of substance-abuse services at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health; and Kattie Portis, substance-abuse-policy adviser to Boston mayor Tom Menino — spoke about the heroin epidemic in Massachusetts. About how heroin use has doubled in the past 10 years. About how the deadly drug is cheaper and stronger today than ever before. Occasionally, speakers talked about "the kids," by which they meant the record number of 18- and 19-year-olds snorting and injecting heroin these days.

Some of these former kids, now all recovering addicts, kicked off the MOAR forum with sobering introductions. They included people like Sue, a tall Latina with a small tattoo on her left hand. Sue got hooked on heroin at age 21, she told the 75 or so audience members, to cope with domestic violence. Erica, a twentysomething mother of three, used to inject a gram and a half of heroin a day: now, she’s nine months clean and sober. And then there was Dana, a graying, middle-aged man who nursed a heroin habit for three decades before entering a methadone program in 2000. Currently, he’s "living drug-free" and speaking out about addiction and recovery.

More than anything else, the MOAR forum represented a call to action. The substance-abuse workers, recovering addicts, and supportive family members who attended the event used the occasion to get energized over an upcoming advocacy blitz on Beacon Hill, in anticipation of another tight budget season. The sense of urgency was clear. After all, since fiscal year 2001, state-funded drug-abuse-treatment-and-prevention programs have been slashed by $16 million, a cut of up to 25 percent. Last year, budget cuts forced the shuttering of six public drug-detoxification centers across Massachusetts. In Boston, according to the Public Health Commission, the city lost almost half of its detox beds, going from 311 in April 2003 to 189 in October. The number of people turned away from treatment programs has more than tripled in that time.

Needless to say, the state’s substance-abuse-treatment system needs an infusion of cash. And forum participants spotted salvation in Senate Bill 2095, which would increase the state’s excise tax on alcoholic beverages and funnel the proceeds into substance-abuse services. Expected to generate $100 million in tax revenues, the legislation is the pet project of State Senator Marian Walsh (D–West Roxbury), who, at the MOAR forum, railed that "drug addiction and the lack of treatment is the budget buster." Rather than spend money on treatment, Walsh said, the state is spending money on prisons, foster-care placements, and hospitalizations. Senate Bill 2095 recently passed the legislature’s Taxation Committee, which Walsh called "a huge accomplishment" in this no-new-taxes era. It’s now sitting before the Senate Ways and Means Committee. "This is how we get out of our downward slump," Walsh told the crowd to rousing applause. "In my opinion," she concluded, "this is the biggest thing that we can do. Really."

Walsh’s words did wonders for those in the room. Participants soon shouted out strategies for tackling the skeptics ("Let’s take Governor Romney to dinner with five addicts" was one suggestion). They planned sessions to teach recovering addicts how to tell their stories to policy-makers. And they urged each other to call legislators, neighbors, friends. As Maryanne Frangules, MOAR project coordinator, said: "Make this [advocacy campaign] like a healthy addiction. Do something positive."