DRUG TREATMENT: JUST SAY NO

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY should reject Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s plan
to enhance drug treatment and education programs.

Drug users can pay for their own "treatment" if they really want help.
They found the money to buy drugs, they can find the money to buy
treatment. State funding for addiction treatment only helps addiction
treatment providers.

The most popular way of helping people with drug and alcohol problems
is through free self-help programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)
and SMART Recovery. Citizens create these programs and groups on their
own. They are self-supporting. Self help means self help. It doesn't
mean state help. The state should stay out of the religious and
secular cure of souls.

If people are willing to break the law to get money to buy drugs, they
should be punished for breaking the law. Drug use is not a valid
excuse for law-breaking. Many illegal drug dealers are neither violent
nor drug users. Why do they need treatment? Treatment for what?
They're in jail for illegal, consensual business transactions.
Medicine has nothing to do with it.

If the state views criminal acts as stemming from a mythical disease
called drug addiction, then people labeled as drug addicts must
necessarily be exculpated for the harm they do to others. Viewing
crime as a product of addiction is a version of the insanity defense.
It's also a slippery slope. Any number of criminal behaviors can be
said to stem from "behavior disease."

Common sense tells us that addiction is a choice, not a disease.
Behaviors cannot be diseases. Homosexuality and heterosexuality refer
to behaviors, not to diseases. Drug use is a behavior, not a disease.
Going to the church, synagogue or mosque of your choice is a behavior,
not a disease.

People struggling with real diseases - heart disease, diabetes, AIDS,
rheumatoid arthritis, cancer and cirrhosis of the liver - have nothing
in common with people who selfishly ingest drugs to avoid coping with
problems. They can't choose to abstain from cancer or diabetes.

As they say in AA, "The first thing to go is the truth." The truth is
that drug users complain and lie about how they can't control their
behavior. The truth is there's no such thing as an involuntary
behavior. The truth is that comparing drug users to people with real
diseases is cruel to people with real diseases.

A final point to consider is that treatment for addiction is
increasingly viewed by courts as a religious activity. When the state
entangles itself in treatment, it violates the free exercise and
establishment clauses of the First Amendment. The state conceded this
point in Maryland vs. Norfolk in 1988, a case involving an atheist who
was sentenced to attend AA meetings after he was convicted of driving
while intoxicated.

I was a consultant to the Maryland chapter of the American Civil
Liberties Union and Ellen Luff, who argued that case. Ms. Luff, a
longtime member of AA, argued that the state had no business "inside a
person's head." Maryland Circuit Judge John W. Sause Jr. agreed.

As they consider the Ehrlich administration proposals, Maryland
legislators would be wise to examine the evidence that treatment for
addiction is simply a problem masquerading as a cure.