MACHIAS – With no money to support drug prevention efforts and a nine-month wait for treatment funds, a Calais-based citizen group is turning to the Washington County commissioners for help.

Neighbors Against Drug Abuse is requesting $5,000 from the county to help defray the costs for office space and supplies to continue the community education and prevention work the group began last December.

NADA is one of two citizen groups that are trying to educate residents about the county’s epidemic of prescription drug abuse and which have been instrumental in efforts by the Regional Medical Center in Lubec to develop a comprehensive countywide drug treatment program.

NADA and RMCL worked with a group of social service providers, educators, medical personnel and government leaders, including the Passamaquoddy Tribe, to develop a plan that includes methadone treatment and replacement drug therapy, intensive outpatient counseling, medical care, detoxification, family counseling and education.

Those services would be available in Calais and Machias and would target an estimated 500 to 600 opiate addicts in Washington County, according to the proposal RMCL submitted last month to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The federal funds – a three-year, $1.5 million grant – won’t become available until July 2002 and the money won’t pay for NADA’s prevention work, according to Nancy Green, a certified nurse-midwife and the president of NADA.

“We’ve been meeting in our kitchens and anywhere we can find a room,” Green said. “We now have an office. We share space with someone, and we’d like to be able to cover some of these expenses.”

NADA’s office is at 6 Lowell St. in Calais. Green said the group needs seed money to continue to conduct public meetings and outreach about Washington County’s drug problems.

Green said NADA applied for a prevention grant from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, but the group’s application had too many pages to be considered.

The $5,000 that NADA is requesting from the county is part of a $9,560 budget that will pay for office rent, telephone, electricity, postage, Internet line, copier, fax machine and a computer, according to the group’s proposal.

On Thursday, the Washington County commissioners referred NADA’s request to the county’s budget committee, saying it was similar to the third-party requests the country receives from a variety of social service agencies.

Commissioner Chairman William Boone said he didn’t believe the commissioners had the authority to make a grant and that the county’s contingency account is restricted to county emergencies.

Rep. George Bunker, D-Kossuth Township, told Boone he believes the county’s drug problem is an emergency.

Boone told Bunker he appreciated his comment but reminded him that the Legislature hadn’t come through with money for an additional Washington County drug agent. The county has only one Maine Drug Enforcement Agency agent, Boone said.

Bunker responded that the delegation has been pushing for more help for Washington County’s drug problem, but was having a hard time because the state is facing a $400 million shortfall.

Noting that the county commissioners already had agreed to be the fiscal agent for RMCL’s treatment grant, Boone said the county was going to take care of itself.

“We’re in a mess in Washington County,” Boone told Bunker. “And we’re not going to count on you anymore.”

Frustration is growing in Washington County, particularly among those who’ve been working to combat the prescription drug epidemic since it was identified almost two years ago.

Sheriff Joseph Tibbetts has assigned two of his four patrol deputies to drug investigations, and Sgt. Donnie Smith, the school resource officer for the county’s Safe Schools program, spends most of his time on drug education in the schools and presentations to community groups.

Last March, Residents Attacking Drugs – a community program in Westminster, Md., that is credited with successfully combating that community’s heroin problem – gave the Sheriff’s Department permission to become the group’s first chapter.

Washington County’s RAD program is centered in Machias and, like NADA, is working to educate residents about the county’s problem with prescription drug abuse. The group supports it activities with fund-raisers.

While education is available, there is no treatment and the problem is escalating, with some addicts turning to heroin, according to Sheriff’s Department drug investigators.

In June, Scott Farnum, the clinical supervisor of Bangor’s new methadone clinic, addressed a group of Machias area social service providers who are struggling to deliver services to the county’s addict population.

Farnum said national studies indicate that enhanced methadone treatment and therapeutic communities – live-in facilities where a person stays for one month to a year – are the most effective treatment options for opiate addicts.

There are no plans for a therapeutic community, and enhanced methadone treatment – if it is funded – won’t be available until July.