THE COSTS OF DRUGS AND ALCOHOL

How we ignore addiction and pay dearly for it

A roaring avalanche of scientific data proves that treatment for drug and
alcohol addiction would reduce crime and save billions in tax dollars. But
the public and politicians aren't listening.

Neither are the media. Instead of recognizing decades of social and
scientific research, the media prefer to report about issues such as crime,
homelessness and child abuse as separate entities, ignoring that their root
cause is our national pathology -- addiction to alcohol and drugs.

This blindness stems from a belief that the public really doesn't want
treatment for addicts, that it wants punishment instead. So politicians,
who rarely support anything that isn't already popular, ignore or oppose
treatment options. The media also pay little attention to treatment,
instead reporting on addiction and its results -- chiefly crime -- as
though it's simply caused by bad people. But does the American public
really like throwing away its hard-earned money building prisons and jails
to house criminal addicts who will only commit more crimes once they're let
out? Wouldn't taxpayers like to spend a whole lot less money, and reduce
the crime rate at the same time, by providing comprehensive addiction
treatment and follow-up care? We think they would. But they have never
gotten the message from the hundreds of scientific studies showing that
treatment works.

The main fault for this lies with the media, that font of public knowledge,
which continue to report about social problems of crime, domestic abuse,
homelessness, welfare dependency, high health-care costs and juvenile
delinquency as though they're intractable conundrums or caused by poverty.
Everyday, newspapers and television report on crimes committed by addicts
or alcoholics without every mentioning that drugs and alcohol were the root
of the problem.

According to the media, criminals are monsters. Chronic welfare clients are
either lazy or disadvantaged. The homeless are economic victims. Juvenile
delinquents are pitiable but beyond hope. Abusers of women or children are
animals.

And yet, studies have shown conclusively that addiction to drugs and
alcohol is behind each of these social pathologies.

Neither the media nor our political leaders recognize this. Nor do they
recognize that these social problems are treatable and curable. The reason
is that addiction is so stigmatized. It's entrenched in our psyche that
addicts and alcoholics, or criminals and welfare cheats, are nothing but
bad people, so we refuse to address a treatable problem. Politicians pander
to the public's hatred of drug addicts. And we continue to spend huge
amounts of tax dollars on punishment that doesn't really work.

In the latest scientific study on addiction, released last month, the
American Medical Association and the Physician Leadership on National Drug
Policy as well as health officials from the Clinton, Bush and Reagan
administrations, declared that treatment for addiction works as well as
treatment for diabetes and other chronic diseases. The study showed that
drug treatment can cut crime by 80 percent and cost a fraction of the cost
of incarceration. Every dollar invested in drug treatment saves seven
dollars in societal and medical costs.

Doesn't this sound like a good political platform, cutting crime by 80
percent at a fraction of the cost of building more prisons?

This knowledge has been public information for decades. A study published
40 years ago showed that most murders involved alcohol. Fifty years ago,
the Los Angeles police chief testified before a state Legislature hearing
that half of all police cases involved drunks.

Since then, pre-eminent social and scientific research institutions, from
RAND in Santa Monica, to the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina
and nearly every major university in the nation, have produced studies
showing that addiction causes social problems, that treatment works to
reduce addiction, and that this is the cheapest and most effective way to
eliminate these social problems.

But what does the public believe? A recent survey showed that most people
want more jail time and less treatment for addicts.

That's lunacy. And we can only blame our elected leaders and the media for
ignoring the overwhelming scientific evidence. These social problems are
epidemic, but neither politicians nor reporters ever mention the disease of
addiction that's causing this epidemic.

Right now, Congress is trying to strip funding for treatment from federal
law enforcement and prison budgets. In the House of Representatives,
lawmakers want to allow local governments to kick residential treatment
homes out of neighborhoods. And in cities and counties across the country,
elected officials routinely turn down land-use applications for new
treatment centers. Politicians are doing the opposite of what science says
they should do.

It's the most ignored news story in our nation. A mountain of scientific
evidence says one thing; the public, media and politicians say the
opposite. And we continue to pay through the nose for such ignorance.

Copyright 1998 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.