Pubdate: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 Source: Texarkana Gazette (TX) Copyright: 2006 Texarkana Gazette Contact: http://www.texarkanagazette.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/976 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/women.htm (Women) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) TREATING ADDICTION It's More Expensive but Effective As the new year is the time for making resolutions for self-improvement, it seems an apt moment to consider a couple of programs, one in Arkansas and one in Tennessee, that aim to spur on people with addictions to get help. They take different approaches but they share the same shortcoming. And as usual, when governments are involved, the shortcomings center on the most effective answer to the problems they are trying to resolve. In both cases, this boils down to failure to provide adequate funding and facilities for treatment of addictions. Let's look at Tennessee first. In that state, first-time drunk drivers now are sentenced to several shifts of picking up litter alongside highways. They are to do this while attired in a fluorescent-colored vest bearing the words: "I am a drunk driver." The point of this exercise is to provoke a sense of shame among offenders, so that they will be loath to repeat the error that earned them the colorful vest. Maybe it will work on a small percentage. But it is unlikely to have a widespread or lasting impact on driving down numbers of people who drink and drive. Just consider one segment of the population this might affect--the people addicted to alcohol. Likely as not, their addiction impairs their judgment, or they wouldn't drive drunk. In many cases, their addictions have already cost them much of value--jobs and relationships, for example. Forfeiting their pride to don a garment of shame is not going to be among the worst things that have happened to them. Law enforcement officials charged with supervision of these people and organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving agree that a more potent remedy would be jail time and mandatory treatment for addiction. But the state would have to cough up the cash for that, so it's not going to happen. Treatment is expensive, as is housing convicts. Shame is cheap and ineffective. It only makes the state look like it's serious about a solution. Meanwhile in Arkansas, a somewhat more promising program is under way. But it also could benefit from the treatment option. The state now takes newborns from mothers who, health professionals believe, are drug addicted. The idea is to recognize that such mothers can be considered to be abusing and/or neglecting their babies by continuing prenatal drug use. Children can suffer myriad problems, such as low birth weight and mental retardation. Since the law took effect in 2005, the state has responded by taking 37 newborns from their mothers--about one per week--with the intention of promoting child welfare and responsible parenting before reunification as a family. But as officials in Arkansas and nationally point out, addiction treatment options are so limited as to stymie the real goal of the program. Yes, the children are protected for a time. But knowing whether the mothers with whom they are to be reunited have the tools to stay drug free is, as we say in the South, a whole 'nother thing. Without adequate treatment programs, that's an iffy proposition, maybe even a crack pipe dream. Somewhere along the line, it seems to us, we have to strike a balance between punishment and treatment as deterrents to repeated instances of addiction. It may cost more to bolster the treatment option in the short term. We think, though, society, as well as the individuals involved, will profit more from than investment than gambling on shame and fracturing the mother-child bond. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake