FEEDING ADDICTIONS

While lawmakers consider a bill to promote gambling addiction in Florida
(see above editorial), they are simultaneously dismantling programs that
help drug-and-alcohol addicted offenders stay out of prison once they have
served their time.

In an ongoing effort to "balance the budget" - which is to say, to make
ends meet in an era of no-new-taxes and tax relief for the wealthy - the
Department of Corrections plans to reduce funding for its drug treatment
programs to the tune of something like $13 million. That's a false economy
of absurd proportions, since research has shown that drug-and-alcohol
dependent inmates who undergo in-prison or residential drug treatment
programs are considerably less likely to return to prison. Simply put, it
costs much less to treat drug addiction than it does to incarcerate inmates
who are repeatedly imprisoned for drug-related offenses.

The DOC cuts will reportedly eliminate in-house drug treatment in all but
four of the state's 55 institutions; the exempted four being prisons that
receive matching federal funds for treatment. And it will eliminate 34
percent of the available beds at 20 residential programs around the state,
the Miami Herald reported this week.

Thus is rehabilitation further devalued by politicians who like to claim,
simultaneously, to be tough on crime and fiscally conservative. Eliminating
drug treatment programs is neither. It only guarantees that still more tax
dollars will go down the rat-hole of incarceration; to keep under lock and
key addicted inmates who might have returned to useful lives but for the
lack assistance in escaping their dependencies.

That's just foolish, wasteful public policy. Ignoring drug addiction is as
foolish as fostering gambling addiction.