Harrisburg doesn't need more bureaucracy. But there's no question that Pennsylvanians do need more access to better drug- and alcohol-treatment services. The effectiveness of this new agency will depend greatly on the player-to-be-named-later.
An estimated 788,000 Pennsylvanians have a drug or alcohol problem and cannot get treatment. One in four families has a loved one with an addiction.
Maybe that helps to explain why the Republican-led Senate, which is loath to create new layers of government, approved the new department by a lopsided vote of 43-7. The House approved it 191-3.
"They [legislators] get calls for help all the time," said Deborah Beck, president of the Drug and Alcohol Service Providers Organization of Pennsylvania. "We're in an epidemic."
The proposal, sponsored by Rep. Gene DiGirolamo (R., Bucks), will largely preserve the Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Programs currently run out of the Department of Health. But DiGirolamo said creating a cabinet-level post will give the issue a higher profile and put the state in a better position to obtain more federal funding for these programs.
If the creation of this new department sneaked up on the public, it isn't DiGirolamo's fault. He's been working on the issue for six years. The House has approved his proposal in two previous sessions, and he's held several public hearings on it.
The state's failure to provide more people with access to drug and alcohol treatment has resulted in other costs to taxpayers. DiGirolamo said the Department of Corrections alone spends nearly $1 billion per year on prison inmates who have addictions. And about three-quarters of the cases in the state's children and youth system involve drug or alcohol abuse.
From the perspective of taxpayer resources in another tight budget year, the timing of this newly created post isn't ideal. But the thousands of state residents who need these services are counting on this proposal to become something much more than another layer of bureaucracy.
