Increased availability of drug treatment has helped cause a decline in the drug-overdose rate in the city of Baltimore, the Washington Post reported June 9.

Drug-intoxication deaths fell to 218 in Baltimore in 2005, down from a high of 328 in 1999. Experts traced the trend to a 62-percent rise in the number of publicly financed addiction-treatment beds in the city, which increased from 5,136 to 8,295 over the past decade. Baltimore also has distributed anti-overdose kits to opiate addicts that include the drug naloxone; the kits are credited with preventing nearly 200 potentially deadly overdoses over the past two years.

Since 1996, local funding for treatment has risen from $18 million to $53 million. Part of that funding came from the nonprofit Open Society Institute, and founder George Soros promised to continue the foundation's financial commitment to Baltimore.

"It really has produced tangible results," he said of the Baltimore program. "It has been very successful in showing that there are alternative ways of dealing with the drug issue other than through incarceration."