GOD-BASED PROGRAMS CAN HELP ADDICTS

First, let me state that I think Proposition 36 is a step in the right
direction. I can identify with the frustration of Judge Morris and the
others who are burdened with responsibility to find treatment for this
terminal disease.

Being a former "maggot" myself, having spent 13 months in the "cocoon" of a
residential treatment program, I feel an urgency, not to mention an
obligation, to share the burden of the task at hand.

However, during my transformation I fell a few credits short of earning my
"wings." Although willing and able, my lack of credentials has hindered my
migration into the field. The program I graduated from has an 86 percent
success rate of sobriety being maintained for six years past graduation.
Yes, I am in the 86 percentile.

It seems to me, especially after reading the grade San Bernardino County
received for the implementation of Proposition 36, that we could use a new
plan. Reading the statistics concerning the outpatient and inpatient
percentages, it is obvious to me that those doing the assessing have not
been informed that this disease is terminal. Intensive care is required.

The percentages should be reversed; very few have the strength to over come
in the same environment that kept them down. We don't give the prisoners the
option of what prison they will attend.

For starters, we should add Teen Challenge and similar programs to our
standard diversion lists and send representatives out to study them with the
hope we might duplicate their successes. At the very least, we have a place
to put the hard-core addict. We will have the existing programs in place for
the first- or second-time offender that can still be motivated by behavioral
psychology.

After Sept. 11, everywhere you look, it's God bless America, in God we
trust, the miracle stories of ground zero. Yet we won't trust God to heal
the drug addict. Based on the frustration demonstrated by Judge Morris'
statements in the article, we have all but admitted that we don't hold the
answers. I fail to see what we have to lose.

It would seem that during this time of America's renewed interest in God,
that a man with vision and the authority would find himself a bandwagon for
people to jump on. It is tragedies like the twin towers that bring about
changes in law; why not make this one of them?

CHARLES P. WILLIAMS

Rancho Cucamonga