Drug and Alcohol Recovery Center Officially Opens in Lehigh Valley

Lehigh County officials and a former member of the Clinton administration cabinet took part Monday in officially opening the new Lehigh County Center for Recovery in Salisbury Township.

Area residents will no longer need to go out of the Lehigh Valley to obtain drug and alcohol rehabilitation services. The new center currently houses 17 inpatients and has been open for about three weeks.

The Lehigh County Center for Recovery, located at 1620 Riverside Drive in Salisbury Township and adjacent to the county work-release prison, is a 31-bed, co-ed inpatient detoxification and dual-diagnosis program facility.

Kerianne Williams-Pollinger, the center's intake director, said the program is not limited to Lehigh County residents. "Anyone can call and come in for an assessment," she said.

The facility is seen as a national model for co-occurring disorders involving substance abuse and mental health. It is operated by the Lehigh County-CRC Health Group and White Deer Run treatment center.

Tom Muller, director of administration from Lehigh County, said the task of finding a site and actually building the center suffered greatly from what he termed NIMBY syndrome.

"That's not in my back yard," he said. "We built this on county property. I want to thank Salisbury Township, manager Randy Soriano and the zoning people."

More than 9 million Americans suffer from co-occurring disorders of substance abuse and mental health issues, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Adminstration (SAMSHA).

Retired four-star general and former Clinton drug czar Barry McCaffrey, the keynote speaker at Monday's ceremony, noted that society can't arrest its way out of the current drug and alcohol abuse problem.

"Every time you don't lock someone up, it's $25,000 saved," he said. "This is going to be a national model. People will spend less time behind bars and more time getting back to work. People who come here are desperate, sick and under arrest. In three days, they're clean and in 25 days they understand their illness."

McCaffrey noted that the county will soon recoup its $4.4 million investment in the detox center -- as a result of less incarcerations.

"We've got 23 million chronic substance abusers in the country," McCaffrey said. "In 14 years, we've had adolescent drug use go down and in the last four, it's gone up. Ask police officers, judges and ER doctors about the effects. They're devastating."

McCaffery said that nobody wakes up at age 25 and becomes an addict.

"It starts in eighth grade, when they've been binge drinking, smoking pot and taking Ecstasy," he said. "Ten years later, it makes a terrible difference for these kids."

McCaffrey also lambasted medical marijuana use and states that have legalized marijuana.

"It's a disaster," he said. "Five to 15 percent of Americans want to smoke dope. Washington and Colorado, in defiance of federal laws, legalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. Smoking marijuana hasn't any medical benefit. It's nonsense. You ask any ER nurse and they'll tell you the number one adolescent drug treatment is for marijuana."

Gary Tennis, secretary of the state's drug and alcohol programs, said 80 percent of crime is tied to drug addiction.

"Addiction and drug addiction hits one out of four families and, because of the stigma, the level of families suffering is enormous," he said. "Untreated addiction is the biggest cost driver to taxpayers."

The $4,428,000 price tag for the center was paid by state funds the county accrued from the Health Choices Reinvestment fund. No county property tax revenue was utilized to pay for the project