Strung Out and Strung Along
While hundreds of addicts in D.C. are waiting for services, the agency in charge of treating them piles up cronies, surplus equipment, and sweetheart contracts.
Cover Story
One Thursday night in June 1999, nearly 40 kids aged 12 to 19 made their way by multiple buses or old cars down Bladensburg Road NE, past the Teamsters' local, empty warehouses, and burned-out buildings of industrial Ward 5, and pulled up to 2146 24th Place NE. The old warehouse-cum-D.C. government office building seemed like an unlikely teen hangout. But inside, it held the promise of a universal teenage pleasure: pizza.
Counselors from Sasha Bruce Youthworks had long ago learned that food could help lure some of the city's most troubled kids to a weekly session of its drug-treatment program, called Necessary Interventions for Adolescents. But after spending the evening discussing mood-altering chemicals, Program Director Terrence Walton made an unexpected announcement just before dinner: The District's Addiction Prevention and Recovery Administration (APRA) had terminated the program, and that night would be their last together. After Walton broke the news, three-quarters of the kids simply walked out--without eating. "Which never, ever happens," he says. "Kids don't turn down pizza."
Walton was surprised that even kids who had been forced by juvenile court judges to go to the program were upset--angry, even. "'Here we go again,'" he says they muttered. "They were really devastated," adds Walton, who is now the treatment director of the city's drug court. ... Continued 
Issue of Apr. 14 - 20, 2000
News and Features
- Strung Out and Strung Along
Cover Story - There's Something About Mary
The City - This Week in D.C.
The City - Harmony Memorial Park
The City - Back to the Big House
The City - Sins of the Fathers?
The Mail - APRA-pos
The Mail - We Are Family
The Mail - Chorus Line
The Mail - Audio File
The Mail - It Could Happen to You
The Mail
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- Male Bonding
Cheap Seats - Beef Jerkies
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City Desk - Bringing It Home
City Desk - Never-Everson
Loose Lips - Old News
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- And When Some?
Young & Hungry
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- Grumpy Old Men
Film Review - All the Same to Them
Film Review - One Good Man
Film Review
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- Deconstruction of the Fables
Music Review - The Thanks He Gets
Music Review - Swoon Over Kingston
Music Review
Theater
- Half Nelson
Theater Review - Heck on Earth
Theater Review
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- Much to His Horror
Arts - Menage a Cinq
Artifacts - Makes a Difference
Artifacts - Feeding Frenzy
Artifacts
City Lights
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- Ute Lemper: Punishing Kiss
City Lights - The Keyboard Meets Modern Technology
City Lights - A Transparent Festival of Improvised Music
City Lights - Rick Rockwell
City Lights - Yusef Komunyakaa
City Lights - Gary Braasch: Polar Thaw--Global Warming in the Arctic and Antarctic
City Lights - Lloyd's Prayer
City Lights - A Moment of Innocence
City Lights - Gimme That Beat!: 25 Years of Go-Go on the Streets of Washington, D.C.
City Lights - Making It in Musicals and Cabaret
City Lights - Operation: Cliff Clavin
City Lights - Irene Zabytko
City Lights - Ray Brown Trio
City Lights - Spring Peepers
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