Addiction is an Illness, Not a Crime: The Case for Treatment over Incarceration

When alcohol was illegal, and prohibition was enforced, society would often look down on, disregard, or abuse drunks. It seems individuals and society saw them as criminals and forgot about the individual as a person and/or a human in need of help. Today, alcoholics are not considered criminals, bad, or immoral. They are rightfully seen as sick or having a problem.

Addiction is an Illness, NOT a crime!

If the point of the War on Drugs is to reduce the amount of illicit drugs being used by society, the opposite is happening. By implementing imprisonment instead of offering or teaching the benefits of therapy and addiction help and prevention, American society alienates and further debases users/abusers. This creates a paradox; such treatment confirms already low self-esteem beliefs that they are bad people and ignores their sickness, making treatment, self-esteem recovery, and the drive to change less appealing and probable. 

When drug offenders are apprehended, they are put through the legal system, which may or may not have any opportunity for drug rehabilitation. Almost all prisons do not have drug rehabilitation or educational programs. Drug rehabilitation is not free; it is hard to come by because most cannot afford it, and the government doesn’t readily provide it.

A major problem is that America does not provide adequate detoxification and therapy programs. Drug treatment is proven to be cheaper and more effective at reducing drug addiction than incarceration. However, drug treatment is continually underused and underfunded. Reagan, Bush, and Clinton spent about two-thirds of the anti-drug budget on law enforcement and incarceration. 

(Source)

“New Your City incarcerates one drug user/abuser at a cost of more than $150 per day—whereas therapy programs that actually deal with the problem of addiction cost half that. Drugwar money hires police, Federal agents, judges, court personal, prison contractors, correctional officers and parole officers—and for all practical purposes ignores the needs of people who use/abuse drugs. Addicts without money face at least a four-month waiting period for therapy." 1 

 It would seem America has a policy to remove, incarcerate, and criminalize drug offenders instead of fixing the problem, helping the individual, and returning them to society. Most individuals, even if they wanted to, could not escape the grasp of addiction because society does not help them or provide the means for rehabilitation. American drug policy never solves the problem of individuals using or abusing illicit drugs. 

The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), America’s leading organization working to end the war on drugs, agrees that the drug war hurts addicts. A study by the RAND Drug Policy Research Center found that treatment is "7 times more cost effective than domestic law enforement method, 10 times more effective than interdiction, and 23 time more effective than the "source control" method." 

1. Kane, Joseph P. “The challenge of legalizing drugs.” America. 1 Aug. 1992. 23 March 2007. 

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