STATES HEAVY ON DRUG CLEANUP, NOT PREVENTION

BODY: WASHINGTON -- The states spend, on average, about 13% of their
budgets cleaning up "the wreckage" of alcohol and drug abuse -- the same
sum they spend on higher education, a study shows.

Of the $ 81.3 billion the states spent in 1998 dealing with substance
abuse, less than 4%, or about $ 3 billion, was spent on prevention and
treatment programs. The remainder is spent on a range of services including
law enforcement, welfare and health care.

The three-year study, prepared by the National Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York, provides state
lawmakers and governors with the first comprehensive cost analysis of the
impact of substance abuse on state budgets, according to its authors.

"This is truly insane public policy," says Joseph Califano Jr., the
center's president and secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under
President Carter. "States that want to reduce crime, slow the rise in
Medicaid spending (and) move mothers and children from welfare to work . .
. must shift from shoveling up the wreckage to preventing children and
teens from abusing drugs."

Califano terms the substance-abuse problem "the elephant in the living room
of state government," meaning it consumes huge amounts of state resources.

Among the study's key findings:

* Substance abuse is among the largest costs in state budgets. Of every
state budget dollar spent, 13 cents goes to substance abuse.

* The largest portion of state funds spent on substance abuse goes to
finance prisons, juvenile justice and court costs, for a combined total of
$ 30.7 billion.

* States spend 113 times more to deal with the impact of substance abuse on
children than they spend to prevent or treat it.

* Americans paid $ 277 per year in state taxes to deal with the effects of
substance abuse.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy praised the report
for sending the right message about the need to treat substance abuse. "We
cannot simply arrest our way out of the problem of drug abuse and
drug-related crime," Edward Jurish, acting director, said in a statement.
"Comprehensive treatment programs must be implemented to end the cycle of
drug abuse and crime."

The study, which included Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, found that New
York devotes the largest share of its budget, 18%, to substance abuse,
while South Carolina spends the least, 6.6%. The study's authors caution
against comparing states because the report does not include federal or
local funding totals.

After New York, the next largest spenders on substance abuse were
Massachusetts, California, Minnesota and Washington, D.C. At the other end
of the spectrum, the smallest portions were expended by Puerto Rico, with
6.1%, followed by South Carolina, Connecticut, Wyoming and Arkansas.