Addictions

Addiction is one of the most costly diseases in America right now,  filling our prisons, and killing our children and parents slowly.  A generation of parentless children, and drifting, seemingly heartless walking dead has descended upon America.  From the opening paragraph you would think I would be vigorously anti-drug.  You would think I agree with America’s War on Drugs.  Well, maybe not.  The War on Drugs is the other Vietnam.  The other Iraq.  The other ill-advised “war”.  It serves only to justify the massive prison budget we maintain.  It serves only to justify the massive prison-industrial complex we allow – something that is tantamount to legalized slavery.  It is unfortuate our companies have tapped this unfortunate and disenfranchised labor pool.  I’m definitely a fan of mass murderers, rapists, armed robbers, embezzlers, arsonists, and drug dealers going straight to prison.  I’m also a fan of them working their asses off while in prison.  Just not answering calls for a major telecommunications company.  I’m in favor of them doing something a little more productive, engaging in some type of societal “investment” such as building parks, bridges, schools, maintaining jails, etc.  What I’m not in favor of is drug users going to prison.  The sad state of our decades long drug interdiction campaign is that of broken people, families, homes, and communities.  Today I walked through a small area of Brooklyn.  Brooklyn is an area that despite its’ recent fashionable resurgence is one that looks like a bomb hit it…the bomb in this case was crack.  Introduced by the CIA to fund another pointless war, crack spread through Brooklyn, Queens, really any place with a poor to middle class populace, and it just destroyed the collective consciousness that had managed to build itself.  Unfortunately it was also a brilliant economic boost for those on the other side of the epidemic.  Jails, prisons, police precincts exist because of the scourge of crack cocaine, methamphetamines, ecstasy, and other drugs that are smoked, injected, snorted, and sold routinely.  The economic toll this has on our country is absolutely staggering, and the strategy to reduce this toll is absolutely correct – reduce the market for it.  A drastically reduced market will serve to drive thousands of dealers out of business, one way or another.  Making penalties for dealing all drugs commensurate to the amount of drugs found regardless of the drug would do much to reduce the inequities of the current drug enforcement system.  Unfortunately, putting sick people behind bars will do nothing to curb their illness.  Their illness in this case is addiction.  Addictions are a serious psychiatric problem – NOT a personal choice.  We allow people who are addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, prescription painkillers multiple attempts to get clean without prescribed jail time – why aren’t we doing the same for people who are caught possessing harder illicit drugs?  Why aren’t we pouring money into non-criminalizing medical treatment programs that don’t destroy families indiscriminately?  These are some of my motivations for pursuing research that could help treat addictions.  There is a legion of people who, shaped by both their past experiences – social and pharmacologic – are completely unable to participate in society in a productive manner.  We owe it to them to lift them back onto their feet.  Otherwise we lose the right to refer to ourselves as a “society”