Photo ID an obstacle for homeless on heroin
Most detox centers require identification to admit patients
PHILADELPHIA — Nearly two decades of using heroin and a year of living on the streets of Philadelphia had led Steven Kemp to a simple conclusion: It was time to get sober. But when he staggered into a detox facility one Friday night, his head brimming with the thought that suicide would end the pain, he was told he couldn’t be admitted because he didn’t have a photo ID.
Kemp said he was turned away from the hospital and spent the night stealing enough small items to trade for a handful of Xanax. He swallowed the pills, cooked up some heroin and injected the drug into his arm with the intention of killing himself.
“If somebody goes in and says ‘I need help,’ they should get it,” said Kemp, 35. “I understand people have to get paid, but you’re supposed to be a health professional; you took an oath.”
As the nation’s heroin and painkiller epidemic rages, small but vulnerable populations of homeless people are sometimes turned away from the nation’s already threadbare system of drug treatment centers because they do not have valid photo identification.
Transient lifestyles are not conducive to keeping the identifying documents that are often necessary during the screening processes for drug treatment facilities. To reapply for the documents can sometimes take months, especially if a person doesn’t have a stable address, a birth certificate or a Social Security card.
‘We let them die’
The consequences often can be deadly or dangerous, experts said.
“It’s Russian roulette every time you inject. We let them die from a treatable disease because they don’t have an ID,” said Dr. Corey Waller, chairman of the legislative advocacy committee of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, a group that represents addiction specialists.
Even with political will at a high to combat an opioid epidemic that killed more than 30,000 people in 2015, less than one in 10 of the country’s substance abuse treatment facilities offer certified opioid treatment programs, according to statistics collected last year by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
People without IDs generally don’t make it past the intake process at medical facilities, so tallies of their refusals are hard to come by, but advocates said it happens at least twice a day in Philadelphia alone.
‘A helplessness’
Experts said they’ve never seen a consolidated statistic on how frequently it happens nationwide, but the ID barrier to treatment is well known; a 2010 Baltimore study recommended facilities waive the requirement.
“Every time we delay someone from getting into treatment, it puts them at risk for their life,” said Jose Benitez, the executive director of the nonprofit Prevention Point Philadelphia.
The ID requirements at drug treatment facilities are intended to prevent people from enrolling in multiple programs and selling opioid medication on the black market, said a spokesman from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Some detox centers will admit a person without ID first and make time later to sort out the person’s identity, but doing so comes at the risk of running afoul of federal and state regulations on dispensing medications, experts said.
Not three full days after his suicide attempt, Kemp stood in a park in central Philadelphia. Pinhead-size scars and bruises with small scabs at their centers dotted his forearms. He said he just wants to “feel normal.”
“There’s just like a helplessness, a hopelessness,” he said. “I know this is my fault; I’ve grow aware of the consequences of my actions. I don’t want to do it anymore.”