NEW TACK IN WAR ON DRUGS

WORKERS AT THE Sheridan Correctional Center are ecstatic that their
jobs will soon return. That certainly is good news for the workers and
the economically stressed town of Sheridan.

What is good news for the rest of the state - and possibly even the
nation - is how those jobs are coming back.

Sheridan Correctional Center, located about 60 miles southwest of
Chicago, will soon reopen as a comprehensive drug treatment facility
capable of housing 1,100 drug-addicted prisoners. Gov. Rod Blagojevich
made a campaign pledge to reopen the facility.

RESIDENTS OF SHERIDAN are no doubt happy the governor is keeping his
pledge. It will be interesting to see how the new mission of the
facility will be accepted statewide. We certainly believe it is a
promising endeavor.

Since the "drug war" began in the early 1980s under President Ronald
Reagan, the country and its individual states have devoted vast
resources to incarcerating drug offenders.

"The number of inmates incarcerated for drug offenses at all levels -
state and federal prisons and local jails - has skyrocketed by more
than 1,000 percent from 40,000 in 1980 to 435,000 by 1999," reads a
report by The Sentencing Project. "At that point, there were 251,200
drug offenders in state prisons incarcerated at a cost of about $5
billion annually." One study indicates almost 60 percent of drug
prisoners have no history of violence or high-level drug dealing.

WHILE THE VAST majority of money devoted to battle the drug war has
been focused on law enforcement and incarceration, few would view the
situation as improving during the past two decades.

With the exception of his political enemies, no one demanded radio
talk show star Rush Limbaugh's arrest and incarceration for his
admitted abuse of prescription painkillers. The OxyContin that
Limbaugh was popping certainly is a drug potentially as damaging as
marijuana or cocaine if abused.

The prescription drug is a controlled substance in Schedule II of the
Controlled Substances Act, which is administered by the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA). Schedule II provides for the maximum
control level for approved drugs, and OxyContin is on that schedule
for a reason. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers the
painkiller to have a high potential for abuse.

Limbaugh has left his radio show temporarily to enter drug
rehabilitation. His fans applaud him for his courage, and most people
would agree treatment is the correct response to such an apparent
addiction. Yet, many of Limbaugh's "ditto heads" call for "illegal"
drug users (OxyContin isn't legal without an valid prescription) to be
locked up and the key thrown away.

THAT IS PRETTY much what we have been doing since the early 1980s. It
isn't working, and it is costing us all a lot both in money and ruined
lives. We agree with Blagojevich that it is time to see how effective
a quality, large-scale treatment program can be.

The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit think tank, issued a report
indicating that drug treatment programs are seven times more cost
effective than an approach that relies on arrest and incarceration of
nonviolent drug offenders. A major study done in California in 1994
indicated that for every dollar spent on drug treatment, the public
would save $7 in health-care and crime costs.

It is clear to us that the return of jobs to Sheridan is only one
reason to celebrate the reopening of the new-and-improved Sheridan
Correctional Center.