TREATMENT VS JAIL

Two news items this week on handling drugs and addiction illustrate the
paradox of Americans' struggle with the issue: Key experts recommend
treatment, while popular opinion favors tougher laws and punishment.

On Wednesday, the Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy made public
a new research study that makes a strong case that treating drug abuse as a
medical problem and offering treatment is much more cost-effective than
sending people to jail. The group is made up of prominent physicians and
public health leaders who had served in the Clinton, Bush and Reagan
administrations.

If the goal is really to reduce the number of people who have drug habits
that create a negative impact on themselves and others, the evidence the
group offered is compelling.

On the same day, however, a study of public-opinion surveys conducted over
the last two decades showed that a vast majority of Americans still support
the drug war and few are willing to spend more government money on
medically oriented drug treatment programs. Researchers at the Harvard
School of Public Health found that while about 78 percent of the public has
believed for the last 20 years that current anti-drug strategies have been
a failure, 66 percent say they're willing to pay more in taxes to fight
drug use, and most Americans want that money to go toward jails and cops.
Support for increased government spending on drug treatment dropped from 65
percent in 1990 to 53 percent today.

The bipartisan group of public-health experts noted that it costs $25,900
to put a drug addict in jail for a year, residential drug treatment
programs cost about $6,800 per year and outpatient treatment programs run
$1,800 to 2,500 a year. Good treatment programs are effective for about 50
percent of addicts and reduce subsequent crime and involvement in the
criminal subculture dramatically.

So why doesn't the public want to spend more tax money on drug treatment?
Maybe it's because they're not convinced that having a drug problem
entitles people to medical treatment at the taxpayers' expense.

If they believe the consequences of drug problems should be paid for by
those who have them rather than by the taxpayers at large, of course, they
would also understand that throwing even more money at the problem be
toughening laws and building more jails probably only makes the problem
worse.

It all doesn't make a lot of sense, but this week's news showed the
dimensions of the gap between how people feel and what actually might work.