passing-a-drug-test-for-thc

WESTPORT STORY SHOWS FAILURE OF NERVE

We should all be saddened by what happened the other day in Westport.

Stanley Street Treatment and Reources ( SSTAR ) is the largest provider of drug and alcohol detoxification and treatment services in this area.  They had a good idea, one that could save lives.  But they were run out of town by a failure of nerve and an unruly mob.  Typical, I suppose, of the way we continue to react to a growing plague, one that could strike any of us -- drug addiction.

No one wakes up one day and says they want to be a drug addict.  If you think they do, then you don't know what addiction is all about.  It could happen to anyone -- you or me.  In fact, I am willing to bet there are already addicts in your neighborhood, if not in your family.

But that's not the point, you say.  Why should we have a needle exchange program only in Westport, in our neighborhood? Well, I agree.  We should have a program in New Bedford and Fall River too.

Did you know that these cities rank number one and two among cities whose HIV population became infected through sharing needles and syringes between 2001 and 2003, according to the Massachsuetts Department of Public Health HIV/AIDS Data Fact Sheet published in March 2005? But doesn't making needle possession illegal reduce drug consumption, you might ask.  Absolutely not.

Get the facts.  No research has ever indicated that.  These programs do reduce the spread of HIV though, and many individuals have been known to reduce their use and seek treatment.  These programs save lives.  Something any good citizen should favor, I would think.

Does it matter that the National Commission on AIDS, the General Accounting Office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Academy of Sciences, the Office of Technology Assessment, and the Department of Health and Human Service have all shown that syringe exchange programs are helpful.  And that the Massachusetts Department of Health, the Massachsuetts HIV Prevention and Planning Group, the American Medical Association, the American Health Association, the American Pharmaceutical Association, the National Academy of Science, the American Bar Association and the U.S.  Conference of Mayors all endorse syringe exchange? I guess it doesn't matter.

What seems clear to me though from the long history of chemical abuse is that prohibition helps create a nation of law-breakers and puts a lot of people who need help in harm's way.  Does anyone remember the disastrous results of the Volstead Act of 1919, when we wanted to prohibit alcohol? We made so many upstanding citizens into criminals, not to mention the illegal economy that we helped to create, that by the end of 1933 Congress finally came to its senses and repealed the act.  Perhaps we should think about some of our current laws in a similar context.

We will never win the war on drugs by treating it as a crime.  Since President Richard Nixon began that war in 1969, it has helped fuel an underground economy world-wide worth more than $500 billion per year and has increasingly targeted not only dealers but the sad user on the street battling an addiction.

That user is our neighbor today.

We need to get rid of all the stereotypes about drug addiction.  Then perhaps we can begin an intelligent conversation about how to deal with this insidious problem.  Even if we don't want to recognize the humanity of the addict, we need to look at the facts.

For example, a Columbia University survey in 1998 discovered that 21 percent of violent criminals in state prisons committed their felonies while under the influence of alcohol alone; only 1 percent were on heroin alone.  That is something to consider.  Should we reinstate the prohibition on alcohol? We need to approach drug addiction with a medical model, not a trumped-up criminal model.  I congratulate STARR for their work treating the addict and trying to establish harm reduction programs.

We need pragmatic and humane solutions to these difficult problems.  And that probably means we need more courage, less failure of nerve, more insight, and less yelling and screaming in a futile attempt to protect ourselves from the demons created through stereotypes.