FIND A DRUG PROGRAM THAT WORKS AND FUND IT

The insidious pestilence of drug abuse has hit every segment of America. It
has attacked rich and poor with no respect for religion, class or creed. As
long as drugs have been around, at no time has finding a solution been so
needed, yet elusive. With the surge of abuse, the by-product has been
crime. Nowhere is that more evident than in Georgia. The state has the
highest percentage nationwide of its population under some sort of
court-ordered supervision - prison, probation or parole - and experts agree
that the main cause is drugs.

Drug abuse has always been a tremendous waste of human potential, but now
there is a drug - crack cocaine - that is cheap, readily available and
highly addictive. Law enforcement agencies have seen crime rates rise in
conjunction with crack traffic. Addicts have turned to all sorts of crime
to finance their habits. Crack houses dot urban neighborhoods, and suburban
traffic flows into seedier parts of town with customers looking to make a
buy. This traffic has caused an escalation of violent crime as various
factions fight to hold their territories.

For all of our prowess, we have yet to find a palatable solution to drug
abuse. Nationally, the "just say no" campaign was a joke. As its failure
became evident, many states, including Georgia, went on an unprecedented
prison building spree. While building prisons is a visible sign of being
tough on crime, dropping addicts into prison cells does nothing to treat
their illness. Not all of Georgia's 192,000 people under court-supervision
are in their plight because of drugs, but a good many are. And a good many
could be rescued if more treatment options were available.

For all of the money state government has put into building prisons, there
has been very little funding - in comparison with the need - for
alternatives. Treatment facilities are few and far between and alternative
sentencing programs, like the one pioneered in Bibb County, could be
expanded. Our county sends addicts to jail because there is no state
facility equipped to handle people with abuse problems.

The Bibb County Drug Court is successful in giving people arrested on drug
charges a choice. Either they get treatment, submit to regular testing and
graduate from the program, or they can go to jail. The program attempts to
short circuit the cycle of drug abuse, arrest, trial, incarceration. It
also gives the person an opportunity to hold on to his or her jobs and
their families and shows them a way to deal with their addictions -
something prison walls have been unable to do.

The real question is: if treatment and alternative sentencing are working
solutions, why hasn't state government realized this and adapted
accordingly? Spending more money on prison cells than hospital beds does
not make much sense.