Clark County plan will boost drug treatment

An anti-drug proposal approved by Clark County commissioners Tuesday will bring hundreds of county residents out of jail cells and into drug treatment each year, an official said.

The $6.4 million initiative will shorten social-service waiting lists and dramatically boost the number of court-ordered treatments for addicted teenagers, spouse-beaters and parents who have lost custody of their children, among other programs.

To manage the higher caseload, a 10th judge will join the county Superior Court.

Funded by a 0.1 percent countywide sales-tax increase last year, it's the biggest chunk of new money in the past decade that the county has devoted to a service expansion.

"This is a huge step forward," said Cleve Thompson, the county's alcohol and drug program manager. "When I came here, we had six detox beds and no inpatient-treatment beds. Sixteen years later, we have almost tripled our size of our detox, have gone from zero inpatient-treatment beds to now 60 fully funded inpatient-treatment beds."

Thompson said the new beds will "significantly reduce" wait times for the county's inpatient facility at the Center for Community Health on Fourth Plain Boulevard.

Sheriff Garry Lucas said the county's most persistent criminals all have drug problems.

"Simply throwing people in jail does nothing to help them succeed in life and to keep them from reoffending," Lucas said. "Having met some folks who have successfully gone through treatment and turned their lives around and are now contributing members of society, it's worth giving it a shot."

Among the new county services and treatments:

The juvenile-recovery court, opened in June for addicted teens, will expand from 12 clients annually to 97.

The family therapy court, for parents who want to reclaim custody of their children, will expand from 25 clients annually to 35.

The domestic violence court, for misdemeanor offenders whose drug problems lead to abuse, will treat 14 clients in its first year, and 50 to 57 in its second.

The number of people who can stay in the county's detox beds each year will double from about 730 to 1,460.

The total number of people receiving long-term inpatient addiction treatment will increase from about 40 each month to about 60 each month.

The number of people getting outpatient addiction treatment, now in the thousands, will increase by about 100.

Thompson warned that unexpected events could force the county to miss some of those targets.

"Some things may not get ramped up as fast as people anticipate," he said. "A lot of times new programs don't start quite as fast as we thought."

Thompson said he estimates the county will be treating 42 percent of those who need anti-addiction help.

Today, he said, the county treats 28 percent of addicts.

Lucas, the sheriff, said the new county programs fit into an 80-year trend that has moved mental-health patients and drug addicts out of state institutions and into county institutions.

But without new taxes, Lucas said, counties haven't been able to afford those costs.

"There's been this continuing effort to decentralize social services," Lucas said. "The necessary resources to deal with the issues have not necessarily gone with the responsibility to deal with the services."