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KING COUNTY, WASHINGTON - The latest edition of Recent Drug Abuse Trends in the Seattle-King County Area indicates that drug-related problems in our region have been on the rise over the past year.
Key findings
- Deaths attributed to heroin set a record for our area during 1998 at 144.
- Cocaine use has shown resurgence after several years of decline; over one-third of adult male arrestees and more than half of female arrestees in King County test positive for cocaine.
- Methamphetamine use appears stable in Seattle-King County, but is on an upward trend in other areas of the state.
- Marijuana remains readily available, and recent school surveys indicate a sharp increase in use among school children in Washington State as compared to national averages.
- Hallucogenic drug use continues to be reported primarily involving younger users.
- The HIV infection rate among local IDUs who inject heroin and cocaine is 1-4%; HIV seroprevalence is 47% among methamphetamine users who are men who have sex with men.
What is King County doing?
- Expanding treatment services for heroin addicts (per a grant from the federal government).
- Providing chemical dependency and opiate substitution treatment services for eligible clients via contract with community-based agencies.
- Increasing availability of drug-free housing to help support chemically dependent people who are in recovery maintain a drug-free lifestyle.
- Providing prevention and limited treatment services for drug involved offenders in the local criminal justice system.
- Providing needle exchange services for heroin users to help them avoid HIV and other infections, and to facilitate entry into drug treatment programs.
- Providing acupuncture services (per a grant from Washington State) to heroin addicts as a means of assisting drug-dependent people to manage drug cravings and gain entry to (or as an adjunct to) more comprehensive treatment services.
- Providing education and early intervention for children and youth to keep them from ever trying heroin or other drugs of abuse.
- Conducting research into communicable disease risk behaviors to monitor the problems associated with sharing needles and exchanging sex for drugs.
What more needs to be done?
- Prevention education strategies need to continue as a means of maintaining and increasing knowledge among users about the risks for transmission of disease when injecting drugs and sharing needles.
- Treatment services need to be expanded to a "treatment on demand" model for servicing chemically dependent individuals within a continuum of care and aftercare.
- Education efforts need to reach young people who have misconceptions about drug-use (e.g., smoking heroin is relatively safe).
- Proven approaches to reach non-violent offenders who commit crimes under the influence of alcohol and/or other drugs need to be implemented (e.g., community corrections/supervision) or expanded (e.g., drug court treatment services) with swift and certain accountability for non-compliant offenders.
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