Editor’s note: This September, Audacious Ideas features a special month-long series in conjunction with National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month. We’ve asked several individuals to share their ideas about addiction issues and the failed war on drugs. Franklin Dyson is the second in our series.
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“The crisis that’s killing our city” is how Governor Martin O’Malley, former Baltimore Mayor, refers to drug addiction. Beyond the devastating consequences for the individuals who abuse alcohol and drugs, addiction contributes to the spread of infectious diseases and fuels crime. Research conducted by Copersino, Comberbatch, Jones, and Sitzer (2004) states that in Baltimore, injection drug use is the primary cause of AIDS, which is the leading killer of city residents between the ages of 25 and 44.1 Baltimore’s crime rate is double the national average, and as many as three-quarters of the city’s thefts, robberies and murders are associated with alcohol and illicit drugs. During the 1990s, the city’s drug overdose death rate tripled. The economic costs of drug abuse and addiction in Baltimore alone exceed $2.5 billion a year. Many of Maryland’s leaders are coming to the conclusion already reached in Baltimore: Treatment deserves more support. Elected officials have become increasingly concerned about drug abuse throughout the state, especially over heroin’s resurgence during the 1990s.
Let’s face facts, in Baltimore, as well as across the United States, we are fighting a losing battle. The war on drugs is really a war on people who use drugs. Locking up people who use drugs is a waste of time, energy and resources. Jails become a revolving door for many addicts who could benefit more from residential drug treatment programs than being exposed to hardened career criminals and inhumane conditions which exist in prisons. Offering drug offenders an opportunity to go to treatment as opposed to going to jail would help reduce the stress on an already over-burdened penal system and reduce the recidivism rate among drug addicts. Of course not all drug offenders will benefit from treatment, however, those who do benefit integrate back into society as responsible productive members of their communities. The reciprocal effect of those addicts who make a commitment to change their lives is greatly multiplied when they return to their families and communities as changed people.
Unfortunately, this country’s approach to drug treatment is more reactive than responsive. This is due mostly to the fact that much of our country’s economy is built on drug use as opposed to drug treatment. Decriminalize drugs and you step on a whole lot of toes. The need for prisons and police are greatly reduced, as well as the infrastructures which support those systems.
In order to change the seemingly insatiable demand Americans have acquired for drugs we must change our way of thinking about drugs. This whole notion we have about “better living through chemistry” must be re-analyzed and remarketed. Treatment teaches people about the effects of drugs, it gives people without hope a reason to live. It helps people examine and re-evaluate their lives and the direction they are headed. Treatment brings families together and helps them examine their roles and relationships it teaches them how to interact in more wholesome and healthier ways. Treatment affords addicts a time out from being caught up in the getting and using and finding ways and means of getting and using drugs, without exposing them to the hardened life of prison. Treatment works, treatment saves lives.
1 Copersino, M., Cumberbach, Z., Jones, H., Stitzer, M. (2004). Comparative Drug use and psychosocial profiles of opiate dependents applying for medication versus medication-free treatment. American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse 30(2), 237.
Treatment is clearly preferable to incarceration for non-violent users. But the quality of treatment matters a great deal in this equation. Some diversion programs have used low-dosage, inexpensive programs that ignore the lessons of the last two decades of treatment history. And why not consider a priority for diversion of parents–both dads and moms who are willing to enter treatment that takes their children into account, serves children and parents at the same time, and recognizes that the multigenerational disease of addiction needs a multi-generational response? Just sending people to “treatment” is less of a policy step forward than making sure we are sending them to effective treatment. Many programs do not yet meet the criteria for effectiveness as described by NIDA, and we need to admit the need for improvement to move toward those standards.
Yes! We have to find a way to convince city leaders of this, or find new city leaders who know this and have the courage to act accordingly.
http://bit.ly/1FMwAz
Taking a political risk and voting for the people who are making these points already is an audacious idea, but one that has to happen if things will ever change.
Frank, I agree with everything you say about treatment. I just want to pick up on your statement – “We need to change our way of thinking about drugs.” I agree but want to go further – we need to change our way of thinking about WHY people need drugs.
Addiction in American society goes very deep. It derives from a long list of poor choices and bankrupt values. It is about our loss of spirituality, our divorce from nature, our love affair with consumption, our willingness to write off our center cities, our history of racism, our inhospitality towards immigrants, our health system’s focus on disease instead of prevention, and the incessant marketing message: Buy Something, It Will Make You Happy.
Everything and everyone in our society who works towards social justice, environmental sustainability, true community building, healthy food access, and reconnecting with art and nature is helping to prevent drug abuse and sustain people in recovery.
I think Mr Dyson’s points are very important to the discussion on drug use and the incarceration of substance users. I hope many citizens read this. One other important point to consider is our society’s practice of placing “values” on how persons with drug use issues are treated. American society in many ways provides the message that if a citizen is “poor”, they are “bad”. The same implication is thrusted on persons with drug use issues..if a person uses drugs, they must be a “bad person”. We need to educate and promote in our communities that persons with substance abuse problems are fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters…. and being poor and / or using drugs does not make a person “bad”… just in need of help and care.
It’s not just “treatment.” There has to be a source of supply of drugs that doesn’t involve having criminal organizations, gangs, as the source of supply for addicts. If it’s cheaper to get your drugs from the government, and you can also access treatment that way, then why bother to buy drugs from criminals? But this is a huge step that’s not easily voted for by politicians. It sounds quite Orwellian.
I am a DC police officer who does social work in Baltimore in my off duty time. I come in contact with numerous drug users in baltimore and note that the Baltimore police seem only to concentrate of easy statistical arrests – the drug user. The City Stat program should give additional credit to drug dealer arrests; you might want to go further and issue a City regulation or Police General or Special Order requiring officers to arrest any dealer involved or associated with a user arrest (possession), even if only charging the dealer with possession. The people I mentor are damaged further by arrests and cannot find the energy to follow a treatment program if they are always on probation (which usually end up in Violation warrants).
This is a good piece because I’m in recovery and the war on drugs is just that, a war on addiction and the people who uses drugs or commit non- violence crimes. I’m a counselor who deals with client’s who are courted ordered to come to treatment. We need treatment for client who have issues with their drug use, not jail. I talk about my struggels with drug use in my new book http://www.strategicbookpublishing.com/godareyoumadatme.html
As a society we are geared for a quick _______. You fill in the blanks: fix, meal, high, buck, Fxxx, hustle, ride, sound bite, slogan, cliche’. Prison is a huge waist of our money and non violent users time. Treatment, training, work, non drug pastimes hit the nail on the head. Lets change our culture and the Pols will follow.
One of the more interesting studies I’ve read related to drug addiction to living situations (in rats at least):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/jun/02/farout
Willpower may be a key therapy clement:
See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/exhaustedhowtogetyourwillpowerback