FAITHBASED DRUG TREATMENT
Copyright (c) 1997, The Indianapolis Newspapers, Inc.

There are people and groups in America with answers . . .

winning the war on poverty and addiction, one individual
at a time.

Sen. Dan Coats, in a Senate hearing on drug treatment
programs

Some are suggesting the war on drugs is
insurmountable and too difficult for government to fight.
They say marijuana and other drugs should be legal. They
are wrong and they are right.

They are wrong to believe drugs should be legalized
and that the war is lost because gangs are still selling.
But they are right to believe that the war is too
difficult for government to fight alone.

Too often, the best solutions to drug and alcohol
addictions are ignored. The most successful efforts around
the country are not TV commercial campaigns or
governmentfunded counseling clinics.

The organizations most effective in helping addicts to
freedom are those that emphasize faith in God and a turn
from the path of addiction.

While many clinical approaches would emphasize
"treatment" and would consider drug and alcohol addictions
"diseases," faithbased centers put the responsibility
squarely on the individual, presenting drug use as a moral
choice that will lead to further physiological and
financial problems. Counselors with Teen Challenge, which
has 130 centers nationwide (including one in Indianapolis
on E. 46th Street), tell addicts that they need to abandon
their attempts to find meaning and fulfillment in harmful
drugs and should put their faith in Jesus Christ.

The facts say such programs work. The cure rate at Teen
Challenge centers is between 70 and 85 percent. Brian
Dowers, executive director at the Indianapolis Teen
Challenge, said a study of past residents at the
Indianapolis center showed 70 percent of them successfully
avoided the bad habits for which they were treated.

Treating heroin addicts with a pharmaceutical drug such
as Methadone pales in comparison. More than 100,000 people
are enrolled in governmentsanctioned methadone programs
that last for 12 months. A 1991 study sponsored by the
National Institute on Drug Abuse found that 82 percent of
people in the methadone program relapsed within a year.

In addition to having lower recidivism rates,
faithbased drug counseling are often more frugal with
money, operating at a fraction of the cost that it takes to
run a taxpayer funded drug treatment program.

But some bureaucrats have actually tried closing down
faithbased centers such as Teen Challenge of South Texas
and Victory Outreach because they did not employ licensed
social workers and psychiatrists.

Undue and petty bureaucratic scrutiny of that kind is
the sure way to lose the war on drugs.

Texas governor George Bush was disturbed by the
nearshutdown of the South Texas Teen Challenge. Last
spring, Bush established a task force to study how
faithbased programs can help the state further. He also
said faithbased centers can operate on a separate set of
standards and licensing requirements than medical or
psychiatric clinics.

On a national level, government leaders should begin
acknowledging the effectiveness of faithbased programs
rather than focusing on the lost cause of the drug war.
Here in Indianapolis, some rescue missions minister to drug
addicts and Teen Challenge helps teenage girls at a center
on the far Eastside. Betty Violette and others have been
helping female addicts find freedom at Third Phase
Christian Center in Noblesville since 1982.

But there is always room for more people doing this kind
of work.

This city would be wellserved if more faithbased
centers were established. For that to happen, government
should offer its arm of encouragement but withhold its
grubby fingers of bureaucratic regulation.

The war on drugs can be fought one individual at a
time.