Really, California? Really??

I opened the paper yesterday to see a disturbing headline: "California might act to jail more drug offenders." Great. We really need more criminals, and less people in recovery. The question here, you bureaucratic imbeciles, is who does this make the world better for? Is prison somehow better at rehabilitating drug addicts than drug addiction treatment? How does this make sense?!? We already have 3.2 percent of our population in prison; do we need more? Two weeks ago, federal regulators ordered California to cut their prison population; so, oh government of ours, what the hell?

"While one side of the government is addressing prison overcrowding, another side seems to be acting directly counter to that goal," said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director of the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. Here's a fun fact- the mere $120 million for California government funded drug treatment has been cut in half from 2006. Last month, legislators here in California decided to cut 1.2 BILLION from the prison budgets. Why not full, oh, say, 1/10th of that money into drug treatment and help cut down recidivism rates? Why not focus and develop better treatment programming and staff so that the people you have turned into criminals can have a shot at a better life? I mean seriously, people, COME ON. Open your eyes. Prison is not rehabilitation when one is dealing with drug addiction. Addiction treatment will create change. Develop better programming- and laws- and we won't need nearly as many prisons. But will special interest groups be upset? Who cares?? It will be better for our entire population.

Here's a quick excerpt from a New York Times article from a couple of weeks ago:

"R. Gil Kerlikowske, who in May was sworn in as the Obama administration’s director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, is a supporter of drug courts as an alternative to mandatory drug sentencing. The new drug czar and the man nominated as his deputy, A. Thomas McLellan, are viewed by many addiction experts as representative of a sea change in thinking about treatment: away from the punitive, toward more acceptance of nuances and complications of addiction.

“Ten years ago, if you would have asked me this question about addiction, I would have said it’s obviously a moral failure and I don’t know why people can’t pull themselves up from their bootstraps and handle this and get themselves totally clean,” Mr. Kerlikowske, a former police chief in Seattle, said in an interview. 'But we can be going in a different direction. We can look at this from different viewpoints now.'"

So let's build out our drug courts if we can't change the laws. But if we change the laws, we'll have less need for punishment- divert people with possession charges to treatment and allow them a chance to get better. Legal consequences can be a GREAT motivator for people to get well. Allow them that option. Please. We beg you.

So California? I say, get it together. Make us better. Stop creating problems for yourself.

Here's a video on Prop 5, the drug treatment bill that failed to pass in 2008:




A special thanks goes out to Adi Jaffe with the All About Addiction blog for his guest post on Take Part which got me fired up about this.

My friend Jane Mintz of Real Life Interventions recently started an online school for intervention training- check it out here. Pretty cool option, and helps with accountability. This is a training available for her newly designed intervention model, the Field Model of Intervention. Great user interface as well.

Here's something funny.

As always, follow me on Twitter and connect with me on LinkedIn. Become a fan of the blog on Facebook. Support my advertisers! And see you this week.

U.S. Drug Czar calls for end to "war on drugs"

As I talked about in an earlier post, I'm very excited to have Gil Kerlikowske as our new drug czar. On Wednesday, we finally got some good news in the so-called "War on Drugs." In a Wall Street Journal article, new head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske, said that the "war on drugs" was a, "barrier to dealing with the nation's drug problem."

"Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them," he said. "We're not at war with people in this country."

FINALLY some progress and someone who sees the nation's drug problem as something that can't be fixed by putting more and more people in prison. The more people we funnel into treatment as opposed to prison, the better the solution is going to get. I also like how the Obama administration is going to change the policies surrounding the major criminal disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine, thus hopefully closing the racial barrier. The administration is also planning on changing the current federal rules that allow federal agents to raid state-run medical marijuana facilities based on federal law. This would allow states that legalize medical marijuana to operate freely as opposed to being under constant threat from the federal government. All of this is progress. As much as we can do to keep people out of prison for unnecessary reasons and put them into treatment when needed, the better we'll be off.

Here's a video about Barack Obama's stance on drug policy:



Here's a video from Ron Paul about ending the war on drugs:



And here's the famous episode of Different Strokes where Nancy Reagan talks about the war on drugs and just saying no:




Here's something funny.

As always, connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on Twitter. Become a fan of the blog on Facebook. And please support my advertisers!

Also, if you're feeling generous, please donate a couple of dollars towards the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society- I'm riding 100 miles on August 15th in support of individuals suffering from these terrible diseases. Thanks so much, and see you tomorrow.

Binge Drinking and the Military

In exploring the Blog Catalog, I stumbled across the Addiction Index blog which had a great article about binge drinking in the military. This is such a viable topic these days with the wars going on in the Middle East that I thought I'd grab some of the information and pass it along here.

"Binge drinking is so common in America's armed forces that startling numbers of those who serve on military bases report for work drunk, drive drunk and drink illegally while they are underage, according to a study released today by the University of Minnesota and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."- this is from the article in the Minnesota Post. The survey covered soldiers at home and overseas, and an astonishing 25% reported a history of drunk driving. Can we point to the fact that their lives are some dangerous that they seek risk even when off duty?

In an interview with a University of Minnesota radio station, Mandy Stahre, a researcher on the project said that 43 percent of the active respondents reported binge drinking in the past month. That broke down to 29.7 incidents of binge drinking per person per year. That's a huge and dangerous number. How do we better educate these service men and women?

An article in the Chicago Tribune touched on the increase in suicide of soldiers. "The Department of Veterans Affairs tracks the number of suicides among those who have left the military. It says there have been 144 suicides among the nearly 500,000 service members who left the military from 2002-2005 after fighting in at least one of the wars." The website wsws.org reported that in 2008, there were 128 confirmed suicides by serving army personnel and 41 by serving marines.

Now we've started to see progress, with the military providing classes on suicide prevention and alcohol abuse. But how do we truly improve this? It's not like we can take away the trauma that soldiers suffer while on active duty. Our Veterans Affairs offices are already swamped with cases and are underfunded. How do we fix this? The easiest solution- provide more funding to attract better researchers and addictional clinicians. However- that would increase taxes, something more than half the country is against, even though it goes towards making our soldiers safer. Some things to think about as we move forward.

Here's the suicide prevention video:



And here's one about the binge drinking in the military:




Here's my favorite new website.

As always, follow me on Twitter and connect with me on LinkedIn. Become a fan of the blog on Facebook. And be sure to support my advertisers! See you tomorrow.

New Drug Czar

With the new nomination of Seattle Police Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske for drug czar, we're finally seeing a move to put treatment ahead of prison. FINALLY! This may mean we'll start to make progress actually getting addicts and alcoholics help instead of simply putting them in jail and not actually rehabilitating them. By incorporating treatment, we'll be able to provide some options for these struggling people, instead of simply putting them in jail.

"The success of our efforts to reduce the flow of drugs is largely dependent on our ability to reduce demand for them," Kerlikowske said at a ceremony. "Our nation's drug problem is one of human suffering, and as a police officer but also in my own family, I have experienced the effects that drugs can have."

Kerlikowske's stepson has had problems with drugs and alcohol in the recent years, so he understands the situation families go through. I think that's invaluable knowledge for a person in charge of drug prevention in this country; without empathy, it's hard to make good decisions around how we treat this disease.

Here's a video introducing Kerlikowske:



Hopefully we can make some more roads for people to get well. This is a step in the right direction.

Here's something funny. Thanks to Eliza for this!

As always, find me on LinkedIn and Twitter. And if you like the blog, leave a comment! Follow the posts! Feedback is welcome!!