(Title 1} STUDY: MOST CRIMES LINKED TO DRUGS, ALCOHOL
(Title 2) STUDY SHOWS DRUGS, ALCOHOL AFFECTED 80% OF INMATES IN THEIR CRIMES

WASHINGTON - Drug and alcohol abuse and addiction played a part in the
crimes committed by 80 percent of the 1.7 million men and women now behind
bars in the United States, a major national study concluded yesterday.

The study by Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse is the most authoritative assessment yet linking heavy use
of drugs and alcohol to crime. It is expected to increase pressure for
mandatory substance- abuse treatment for inmates while they are in prison
and after their release.

"Those 1.4 million offenders in state and federal prisons and local jails
violated drug or alcohol laws, were high at the time they committed their
crimes, stole property to buy drugs, or have a history of drug and alcohol
abuse and addiction, or share some combination of these," said Joseph
Califano, chairman of the Columbia center.

Califano, secretary of health, education and welfare during the Carter
administration, said the three-year study's results call for "opening a
second front in the war on crime" in the nation's prisons.

This would involve identifying drug and alcohol abusers, assessing their
treatment and training needs, separating them from criminal incorrigibles
and giving them "the hand up they need to become productive citizens and
responsible parents," Califano told a news conference.

It also would involve a substantial investment of public funds - an average
of $6,500 per inmate per year - that both states and the federal government
would be hard-pressed to produce. Still, the study argued that such a
commitment would pay off in the long-run.

The study acknowledged that many of those imprisoned for crimes in which
their drug or alcohol use was a factor "would have committed their offenses
even in the absence of substance abuse." But hundreds of thousands of
substance-involved inmates "would be law-abiding, working, taxpaying
citizens and responsible parents, if they lived sober lives," Califano
said.