Drug Addiction is a Treatable Disease

There has been a big push recently to focus more on treatment and rehabilitation for drug abusers and less on law enforcement and punishment for drug possession. While many people support drug prevention and treatment strategies, it is difficult to move a country in that direction that has spent 40 years pushing for stricter punishments.

Changes in Drug Policy

Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowski’s office held a press conference on November 20 that helped clarify the Obama administration’s stance on the issue. The bottom line he gave is: “We cannot arrest our way out of our nation’s drug problem, and while new strategies are being implemented there is more to do.” (1) Kerlikowski goes on to say that the government has tried to make the necessary change. “We’ve been at this now about two and a half years trying to begin this shift — helping people understand this Administration is approaching the drug problem in a very different way. We have not been as good at getting that message out… in educating people on issues around addiction as a public health concept and less as a criminal justice matter.” (2)

According to Kerlikowski, the shift is going to occur as the government spends more money on prevention and treatment, and less on enforcement, and he encourages states to be open to the change. “I also encourage states to take our lead in support the funding of effective alternatives to incarceration. By implementing a range of innovative, yet proven public health and public safety interventions, we can save taxpayer dollars and improve outcomes and break the cycle of drug use, crime, and incarceration,” said Kerlikowske. (1)

More Treatment, Less Jail

Yet, even with all the talk about treatment over jail time, the statistics are alarming, given the fact that incarceration for drug charges rarely changes lives. More than 1.6 million people were arrested last year on nonviolent drug charges, and the vast majority of these arrests were for low-level possession, not selling or trafficking. Almost half of these arrests — 750,000 of them — were for marijuana possession alone. (3) Statistics show that drug use costs our society $193 billion a year, $56 billion of which can be traced back to costs associated with the criminal justice system. (1)

Putting Money into Programs that Work

The scary thing is that drug use devastates individual lives and it devastates communities. The truth, however, is that drug addiction is a disease that can be treated. People can recover if they are given the right kind of help. We need to find a way to end the revolving door in and out of prison, as well as the “cradle-to-prison pipeline”, as it has been dubbed. Now especially, if our country wants to be efficient in solving the drug problem, we need to do much more than simply throw people in jail.

There is much work to be done here. Debates rage over what drugs should be legal and which should be banned and how we should keep people from abusing any drug. We need to first of all educate our young people on the dangers of drugs and the consequences of doing drugs. Then we need to focus on helping those who have been caught up with drugs, including those who are headed to prison because of it.