High Rural-Area Substance Abuse Found

WASHINGTON —  Rural areas have arrest rates for drug- and alcohol-related offenses as high as cities do, according to government researchers, who recommend that rural states pool their resources to deal with the problem.

The General Accounting Office, in a report released Thursday by several rural-state senators, found also that most prison inmates in sparsely populated states have abused alcohol or drugs.

Substance abuse is so common among inmates that treatment programs are “completely overwhelmed,” the GAO reported.

“There is a problem in the rural parts of this country,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said. “It’s not just an urban problem. We need resources to deal with it.”

GAO investigators agreed, noting that “public, scholarly and policy-maker attention” has been focused on “high-intensity” drug zones in major cities and along the Mexican border.

“Much less attention has been paid to less densely populated rural areas farther removed from the coasts or the country’s southern border,” the report said.

Rural areas and small towns have lower arrest rates for illegal drug use but higher rates for alcohol-related offenses. Total arrest rates for substance abuse are as high in rural areas as in cities, the GAO said.

In studies of prison systems in Arkansas, Iowa, Montana and North Dakota, researchers found that the majority of inmates have problems with substance abuse. Ninety-one percent of Montana’s inmates had abused alcohol or drugs, as had 75% in Iowa, 73% in North Dakota and 71% in Arkansas.

The senators complained that formulas passed by Congress in 1988 tended to give urban areas more than their fair share of federal funding for drug interdiction and treatment programs.

“We want to make sure we’re not discriminated against,” Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.) said. “We feel as strongly about the drug problem as anybody does.”

Rural drug programs cost more to run because of the relatively small number of clients, and rural areas have difficulty finding and retaining experienced staff.