The Rev. Gary DeLong, director of Maine Seacoast Mission and a native of Beal’s Island, says Washington County law enforcers estimate at least 1,000 of the county’s residents are addicted to heroin and/or oxycontin. “One addict user has a dysfunctional effect on at least five other lives,” says Delong. “That means of the 35,000 people in the county, 5,000 lives are almost incapacitated by drug abuse.”
This public health crisis has mushroomed in the past few years – there were 15 people treated in Washington County for opiate abuse in 1996 – and the county has experienced a related rise in burglary, larceny and robbery. DeLong says when he is in contact with health care providers, school counselors, social service workers and teachers, eventually, every conversation turns to the devastating impact drug addiction is having on the county’s residents.
For this reason, he became involved in an effort to convert the former Cutler Naval Base into a therapeutic community drug rehabilitation center, a type of treatment cited in a recent National Institute on Drug Abuse Research Report as the most effective method of treatment to prevent a recovering addict from relapsing into drug use and criminal activity.
Opiate and alcohol addicts are carefully screened and previously de-toxed before entering this type of residential treatment, where they are taught to live in a community composed of treatment staff and other recovering addicts. As addicts demonstrate they are able to be responsible members of the therapeutic community, they are awarded greater freedom, and access to education and vocational technical programs provided in the facility. The aim is to prepare the addict for re-entry into the “real world” after a nine- to12-month stay.
“The problem is not simply de-toxing drug addicts,” says Dr. Stanley Evans, Medical Director of the Mercy Recovery Center in Westbrook, who has been working with addicts for 36 years. “The problem is teaching them how to live so they can function as productive people in the community. I can clean up anybody. It’s getting them to stay off the drug that is the problem. You have to change the person.”
Evans, who is vehement about the need for a therapeutic community treatment center in Maine, particularly in Washington County, says his phone “rings off the hook” with calls from physicians and social workers from Machias, East Machias, Cutler, Baileyville and the surrounding communities who are trying to treat addicted people and do not have the facilities they need. “If this scourge of addiction is not addressed, it will kill the people just as surely as acid rain kills the environment,” he says. “We often talk about the coast of Maine and how we’re interested in taking care of our beautiful coast. I would hope that includes the people.”
Attorney Douglas Chapman of Bar Harbor, who was approached last March by local law enforcement officers to do something about the lack of adequate treatment facilities for coping with the epidemic of drug abuse, initiated the proposal for a treatment center at the Cutler Base. The police turned to Chapman because in addition to developing numerous projects for people in need in Washington County during his 39 years in Bar Harbor, he led the effort a year and a half ago to create Rapid Response, a program which provides immediate professional help for youths who experience trauma such as abuse by alcoholic parents or witnessing a violent crime.
Chapman learned that the Cutler base was available and that proposals for its use were due October 11, 2002. He and Evans, who had helped establish Rapid Response, visited the facility and determined it would be perfect for a residential drug rehabilitation facility. The center would be modeled on Daytop Village, a highly successful 40-year-old program that originated in New York State and has 26 treatment centers in the United States.
Evans says Maine (and New Hampshire and Vermont) has a variety of treatment programs that are effective for people who have a less serious degree of addiction, but nothing like Daytop Village. “There is no place for individuals who have severe addiction and are in deep trouble spiritually, mentally and physically,” he explains. “Many of them are in the second and third generation of addiction and have never learned how to live. They cycle through the mental health, criminal justice and hospital addiction systems and do not receive the care they need. Their number is getting larger and larger.”
Chapman formed the Maine Lighthouse Corporation (MLC) with a 10-member board of directors, which includes Dr. Charles Alexander, Medical Director of Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth; Rev. DeLong, Dr. Roger Wilson of the Bangor Mental Health Institute, Carol Carew, CEO of the Regional Medical Center at Lubec; Dr. Keith Courtney from the Maine Youth Center, and Daniel Wathen, former Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Court.
In April, the board visited several Daytop Village facilities in Rhinebeck, New York. Wanda Cates, who teaches fifth and sixth grade in Cutler and also serves on the MLC board, says the visit marked a turning point for her. “I think before we went I was in the same place as a lot of people who don’t like the idea of a drug treatment center in their backyard,” says Cates. “But after going through a lot of the facilities, and seeing how they were set up like college campuses, and then, in one place, eating food prepared by young residents and served by others who were wearing blazers and were clean-cut, wholesome young people, it really made me stop and say, ‘Where would these people be if they weren’t here?'”
Cates also was impressed to learn that many of the people who were running the facilities were once residents themselves. “You see what they’ve become and know what they went through,” she says. “We met one woman who had been a resident, then left to train as a lawyer and came back to be the director of the facility.”
Through special Congressional legislation, the future of the base is in the hands of the Cutler Development Corporation, (CDC) a six-person committee composed of David Eldridge, Charlene Cates, and Tony Maker of Cutler; Ken-neth “Bucket” Davis and Christine Small of East Machias; and Christine Therrien from Machias. As of mid-January, two other proposals had been submitted. Developer Chris Harrington, principal owner of Sunrise Development Corp., wants to create time-share housing units; and a group of local investors, led by Billy Milliken of Jonesport Realty, propose a combination of housing and commercial use.
Dianne Tilton, Executive Director of the Sunrise County Economic Council, explained that the CDC’s criteria for judging proposals include concerns about jobs and tax revenue to the community, environmental impact, the quality of activities, and ways the project would benefit the community. CDC evaluates the viability of the project’s business plan – where funding will come from and management of finances and the operation – and if there is financial risk to the town. They want to feel confident that the project will endure and the town will not have to find a new use for the base in a few years.
Chapman says the MLC proposal figures show that in five years the treatment center could be the region’s largest employer and source of revenue. MLC has agreed to pay $72,000 to the town in lieu of taxes. It anticipates employing 71 non-resident workers in the first year of operation (planned for 2004) increasing to at least 114 non-resident workers as its clientele reaches maximum capacity of 350 in five years. An administrative office would be opened in Ellsworth.
The treatment center would be funded by a combination of grants and private donations and federal and state sources, including contracts from federal and state corrections systems. Chapman says the facility would be able to treat addicts for less than one-half the amount the state corrections sys tem is paying now. He has been awarded a Challenge Grant from the Beineke Foundation, which will match every dollar MLC raises with two dollars, up to $150,000; one-half the center’s projected operating budget for its first year.
Negative reaction to the proposal has included a petition from 142 Cutler residents who oppose the treatment center. Since the petition was submitted, area groups like Washington County Residents Against Drugs (WCRAD) and Cutler-based Neighbors Against Drug Addiction (NADA) have rallied to support the proposed treatment center. A new group, Friends of Maine Lighthouse Corporation, with members from several towns, has been formed.
Early last November, Chapman received a letter from CDC informing him that the committee had rejected the proposal as it stood. The letter listed several areas of concern, which Chapman and MLC have since addressed in discussions with CDC. On Jan. 6, a group that included the members of CDC; Tim Reynolds, principal of Machias High School; June Ashmore, president of WCRAD; representatives from Indian Township and Pleasant Point Indian Reservations; Evans and some members of MLC board, toured Daytop facilities in New York and talked with clientele, physicians and the directors. The Coastal Resource Center funded the trip. Eldridge said afterwards that he believed he spoke for the rest of the CDC in saying he was “impressed with the operation of the facility at Daytop” and that the visit did “help to alleviate some concerns about the proposal, specifically with security issues.”
Chapman is adamant that the need for the treatment center is too great to ignore. “There are too many people who need help to give up,” he says. “This is a matter of conscience. Although much of the time the problem is hidden because of the shame people feel, when I’m down in Machias or other places, there’s always someone who comes up to me and says, ‘Are you the guy who’s doing this Cutler thing? I hope this happens, because I’ve got addiction in my family.’ It’s the wife or someone else, and all the people are suffering, but they don’t dare go public about it.”
An informational public meeting on the three proposals will be held at Bay Ridge Elementary School in Cutler at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 12.