This interview about drug decriminalization in Portugal reminded me of an issue where I’ve had a change of heart. Does drug legalization or decriminalization make it easier for drug users to get treatment? That’s something I used to believe. Now I’m not convinced. For those who haven’t read this before, my older sister was a drug addict for 15 years before the drugs did her in at age 43.
Over the years I had reason to tell many people in a position of authority that my sister used drugs. When my sister would wind up in the ER as she frequently did I made sure the staff knew she was taking drugs and would try to con them out of prescription drugs. No one ever said “Oh my gracious a drug user! We must alert the authorities!” Never happened. Hospitals see drug users all the time.
When I was trying to get the police to help find my sister when she was on a drug binge, getting their help in tracking down something of my mother’s she had pawned, or trying to get back a car she had loaned out in exchange for a crack rock I’d tell policemen she was a drug user. They never said “Drugs? Oh my God we’ve got to put out an APB to track down this terrible drug user!” It never happened. Police see drug users all the time.
Insofar as the authorities are concerned, the illegality of a drug is not an impediment to speaking to authorities about the issue, in my experience.
Rehab
As far as treatment, my sister got all she wanted and then some. When she was in high school my parents paid for an expensive treatment program out of their pocket. When she got divorced in her mid-twenties and moved back to our hometown she fell in with her old friends and started using again. A few years later she was in a bad way. When I confronted her about it she agreed to go to rehab and our mother paid for another expensive drug rehabilitation program out of her retirement funds. A year later she was using again.
Later on we persuaded my sister to enter state-run rehab programs three times. (There was no more money or will to pay for another round of expensive private treatment that hadn’t been effective.) The first time was after a united family intervention. The second was after a suicide attempt. When we cajoled her into a third stint in rehab she didn’t even try and left as soon as she could.
Rehab isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. When I was much younger I though rehab was to drug addiction what antibiotics were to infection. You go to rehab and when you come out you’re cured. It isn’t that simple. No rehab program is anywhere close to 100% effective, and most addicts will relapse at some point.
Several doctors and social workers told me that the longer people stay on drugs and the more they go to rehab the less likely it is they’ll ever quit. Finally, you can’t admit people to a rehab program against their will unless they’re a danger to themselves or others. It’s voluntary. If they don’t want to go, you can’t make them.
Still, some people do benefit from rehab. My sister was lucky to have a family that could – through my mother’s great sacrifice – afford private care, and was likewise lucky to have TennCare later on. Even though it didn’t work for her I certainly would never say it doesn’t work for anyone. If decriminalization caused government money to be diverted from law enforcement to treatment then it would in fact improve the current situation. However, there’s nothing stopping anyone with the resources to afford drug rehab to take advantage of it today. The phone book is already filled with treatment centers, and decriminalization can’t improve accessibility any further without funding.
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There is exactly one thing that “cures” drug addiction… or any other addiction:
It’s when the addict wants to not be an addict, more than they want what they are addicted to.
That’s it. No drug, no treatment plan, no rehab… the only thing that has any effect whatsoever is their desire for their addiction, vs. their desire not to be an addict.
[rq=56687,0,blog][/rq]It’s called tailoring the narrative…
I don’t know whether decriminalization would improve access to treatment, though it would likely make it cheaper by freeing up enforcement funding or through taxation of the drug.
I think the key difference with decriminalization would be removal of the user’s need to interact with criminals and their incentive to hide their activity. People who sell drugs often have more serious antisocial traits than a willingness to break drug laws, as do users who feed them customers. A legal way to acquire marijuana would probably keep most stoners away from more dangerous stuff like cocaine and opiates because they would never need to enter lawless circles where a pot dealer might introduce them to more addictive stuff.
Take away the need to keep illegal acts secret, and families can detect problems before they get out of control. Take away the dealers, and many casual users will never graduate to harder stuff. It’s not access to treatment so much as prevention of escalation that makes decriminalization sensible.
Sorry you lost your sister. I knew there was something like that in your family, but I didn’t know it had reached a tragic end.
I think there are many benefits of decriminalization. Getting rid of a dangerous underground economy is definitely one of them. It would also reduce the power of the state, which has become increasingly militarized and invasive due to the war on drugs.
My main concern is that legalization could encourage use of hard drugs, and at a minimum could take away an incentive to quit. Hard drug use has huge societal costs unrelated to its illegality. You’d be shocked at how much money my sister soaked up from TennCare and later Social Security disability.
And that’s not even mentioning they way it drugs can utterly destroy a person’s soul (I’m not religious, but that’s the best word I know for it). My sister died on the inside a long time before she died.
“Sorry you lost your sister. I knew there was something like that in your family, but I didn’t know it had reached a tragic end.”
Thanks.