NARCOTICS

Testing Synanon

Close to 90% of drug addicts at federal hospitals suffer relapses once they are released. At Synanon, a privately run California halfway house for narcotics users, a combination of selfhelp, trust and group therapy has lowered the figure to as little as 20%. So successful is Synanon that five affiliates have sprung up across the U.S. Nonetheless, California Narcotic Authority agents raided Synanon's beach-front building in Santa Monica last month and removed Alyce Mae Walker, 27, and Richie Marks, 34, two of the 700 voluntary inmates.

Both Marks and Walker were on parole from California's Narcotic Rehabilitation Center at Corona. From Synanon, they were driven to a nearby state narcotics center and ordered to take tests that would determine whether they were "clean." Under California law, narcotics parolees are subject to periodic surprise testing. On the advice of Synanon's lawyers, Walker and Marks refused to take the test; their paroles were revoked, and they were sent back to Corona to serve out their full terms.

Matter of Morale. Underlying the highly publicized raid was a long-running Synanon campaign to establish complete jurisdiction over its patients, free of state control. Dr. Victor Vogel, chairman of the Narcotic Authority, finally felt compelled to carry the law's test requirements. By rounding up the two parolees, he hoped to establish that his agency has authority over all civilly committed addicts in the state--including those at Synanon. But Synanon President Jack Hurst, 36, believes that a California Court of Appeals has excused his parolee patients from further "clean" tests. He has advised them not to submit. What the court actually said was that state authorities could not bar a parolee from living at Synanon and could treat Synanon's program as the equivalent of surprise testing.

"It's a real 1984 situation," says Hurst, who is convinced that the morale of every Synanon resident has been damaged by the removal of Walker and Marks. "Morale here is very important. You've got to bare your soul, rebuild your whole personality in a demanding two-or three-year process. For it to work, you've got to feel completely safe."

Walker and Marks were denied a petition for habeas corpus last month, but they remain loyal to Synanon and still refuse to be tested. "I need Synanon," says Alyce Mae, the mother of two children. Adds Richie, a jazz musician: "If I just went back on the street, I'd be back on drugs in no time."

DECISIONS

Triumph over Traffic

For seven quiet years, Ira Dennison, an upstate New York businessman, found the Adirondack Mountains over-looking Lake George a virtually soundproof haven from his workaday world. Then bulldozers rumbled onto his property, and the bosky dreamland in front of his colonial homestead became a concrete nightmare. Once remote and inaccessible, his hideaway was partly absorbed by a new exit for the six-lane Albany-to-Montreal Northway.

Many property owners in the same unenviable bind have asked the courts for a legal roadblock against encroaching progress. With rare exceptions, they have lost out to the principle of "eminent domain," which allows the state to acquire private property in the interests of the public good. But Dennison claimed that in addition to compensation for the land itself, the state should pay him for loss of privacy and deterioration of his scenic view. He also tried a more unusual tack. He demanded added damages for the nuisance caused by the traffic noises at his doorstep. Impressed by his arguments, a lower court awarded him $37,000. The state appealed. Dennison, it said, deserved less money because there was no law that allowed him to collect such noise damages. Last week, in a surprising 4-to-3 decision, New York's Court of Appeals upheld the lower court and declared that noise was indeed a compensable injury.

In a majority opinion that read like a precis of Thoreau's Walden, Judge Kenneth Keating mourned "the intrusion of the seemingly endless line of asphalt and concrete into the enclaves which many have sought as surcease from the hustle and bustle of modern-day life." Keating's decision was in line with a landmark 1946 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, involving a North Carolina farmer. He had sued the Government because the noise of military planes from a nearby airfield had reduced his chickens to a state of eggless nervous collapse.

Keating's dissenting colleagues worried that the road decision might lead to a rash of noise-damage suits by people who live within earshot of new state highways. Chief Judge Stanley Fuld took the trouble to write a concurring opinion that New York courts will not grant Dennison-style damages willy-nilly. But as highways reach out farther and farther, more people are likely to try Ira Dennison's tactics.

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