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.