Let’s Just Say No To What Doesn’t Work Doctors’ Orders Treatment Works Better And Costs Taxpayers A Lot Less.

Our prisons are bursting at the seams and our nation’s doctors have a cure: Treat nonviolent drug offenders for their addiction, rather than jailing them.

This is the first time the medical establishment has come out strongly against the nation’s punitive approach to drug abuse.

As prisons overflow with nonviolent drug offenders, a new way of thinking is needed. While many Americans view drug addiction as a moral problem, physicians see it as a public health problem.

“We’ve been telling people to ‘just say no’ when addiction is a biological event,” said Dr. June Osborn, chairwoman of Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy.

Indeed, we seem to have no problem accepting this fact when people check into drug treatments centers, often paid for by health insurance policies. Like the prisoners, these people are often addicted to illegal drugs, they just haven’t been caught.

Those who have been caught get put in prison. As of 1997, 60 percent of all federal prisoners had been sentenced for drug violations. In Idaho, incarceration for drug possession is up 1,000 percent in the last decade. The crowding is so severe, a state report recently suggested it could cut prison population by treating inmates for substance abuse.

Treatment over punishment makes sense financially. Jailing a drug addict costs $25,900 a year. The annual cost of treating each addict ranges from $1,800 for outpatient treatment to $6,800 for long-term hospitalization.

It also makes sense morally. Treatment can cut crime. Brown University researcher Craig Love studied female substance abusers who were in jail and found that 25 percent who underwent treatment were later re-arrested, vs. 62 percent released without substance abuse treatment. Despite the failure of the war on drugs, politicians, seeking to ingratiate themselves with a misinformed public, continue to pass new laws to lock up drug offenders.

It’s time to exchange this policy for one that is based on reason and sound medicine. We can shout Just Say No until we need a good stiff drink, but it’s never going to be effective against addiction. As a society we are rightly concerned with locking up criminals, but treatment, and even perhaps an ounce of compassion, is what’s needed for nonviolent drug offenders.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see headline: Reject half measure; hard time stops abuse

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