In Our View:

COUNTY WASTING LIVES AND MONEY STORING ADDICTS

While addiction is considered a sin by a lot of moralists, it is not a
crime by any specific statute or law. Medical and other sciences approach
consensus that addiction is either a complex disease or a deep syndrome
that can be and sometimes is successfully treated.

And yet most people in local jails, state penitentiaries and federal
prisons are there owing to various addictions. While incarcerated they get
little or no useful treatment. Many find ways to continue their addictions
behind bars. When they get out, as all but a very few do, more than half
quickly resume bad habits and a lot of them end up back in jail.

Incarceration is about 10 times as expensive as better proven treatments
for addiction. But society in general and Clark County in particular prefer
to spend rare dollars keeping addicts in storage for most of their lives
rather than trying to fix the addicts so they can become productive parts
of the economic system.

Such realities were demonstrated anew Tuesday in the article by The
Columbian's John Branton, "Suspended drivers cram the docket; big fines and
long jail stays can result for offenders caught in an escalating spiral."
Most of the men and women serving time in the jammed cells at the Clark
County Jail, Branton noted, were caught driving while their licenses were
suspended. That usually is the easiest case to make against somebody who is
off on a criminal track, and the Legislature has added more and more
reasons for suspending a license with every passing session. The state
Department of Licensing yanked 112,374 licenses in 1992, 328,973 last year.
Almost all of the reasons from drunken driving to failure to pay child
support are incidental to drug or alcohol addiction.

While incarcerated or barred from driving, the addicts cannot pay the
penalties or restitution demands that are based on the thoroughly
discredited premise that addictive behavior can generally be changed by
threat of a monetary penalty. Neither can they meet such other obligations
as family financial responsibility.

The crazy cycle must eventually reach a breaking point. How much worse must
it get before legislators and the justice system realize that better
treatment of addiction is the way out?