Drug Abusers Need Treatment, Research Paper Example

Many people use drugs illegally. This is a fact of modern life. Our prisons are teeming with those who have broken laws by popping, shooting, and snorting substances that are against the law. While I do not advocate drug abuse, I do find it narrow-minded to think that putting drug-dependent people behind bars is a corrective action that results in a better, safer society. People addicted to drugs need help instead of punishment.      

I am quick to say that I understand how drug use can damage communities. My observations alone inform me that drug use links with poverty and other profound social ills. The news media reports that drug addicts steal and commit other crimes in order to gain access to the chemicals that they have grown to need. Therefore, yes, such people need temporary exclusion from normal society, for themselves and all concerned.                                          

I read somewhere that, after oil and military weapons, drugs represent the most lucrative business on earth. A person in law enforcement once told me that if we could rid our city of illegal drugs, we would see a 90% decrease in our local crime rate. Our law enforcers work tirelessly, seizing drugs and the people who use and traffic them, and yet there seems to be the proliferation of drugs at every turn.                                                       

The word is that drugs are readily available to inmates, so even in state run penal facilities, addicts find ways to get high. Placing people who medicate with illegal drugs in prison ignores the cause of their problems and merely postpone their disoriented return to the “normal” communities from which they came and back to their lives of self-neglect. Just think, if we could solve, or at least curb, the tide of drug abuse, a lion’s share of violence would dissipate, abuse cases would lessen, and neglect calls would shrink.                                                                              

How expensive it must be to house, feed, and clothe a state prisoner. The amount in savings that hard working, honest taxpayers could realize by ridding prisons of druggies is staggering. In our current economic environment, we should be thinking in new ways like this for the good of all.     

All of us know an alcoholic. All of us have a friend or family member who has abused drugs. We know the pain that results from this problem. We need to treat it as a problem rather than a crime. Treatment programs have immense success rates in assisting addictive personalities to re-enter society with sobriety and dignity. Drugs tear families apart. Sometimes, abstemious behaviors glue them back together.                                

Why have we been so delinquent in treating drug users the way they need to be treated? How can these people take responsibility for their actions and their lives when all they can think about is getting more drugs into their systems? A person wanders lost in a world that has thoroughly altered the way his or her body functions. What do we do? We throw them in prison and expect that the isolation they will endure there will give them time to think about the wrongness of their actions. What they need are skills for life –skills that teach them how to cope with the demands of life without using drugs. We need to build treatment facilities to house patients, not prisoners. We need to fill these treatment houses with those who are currently in prison for drug abuse (not drug trafficking –a different matter altogether). Let us face it. The vast majority of drug abusers are not the much touted, high- level drug dealers that menace this world of ours. I am of the opinion that those in our system of justice love to talk, at election time, about how tough they are on crime, and this is the primary reason for their reluctance to fresh approaches to heal sick, drug-dependent citizens. Surely, treatments would cost a lot less than prisons do. How can we justify the egalitarianism of a court system that fills prisons to the breaking point with African- Americans when we know that the majority of America’s cocaine users, for example, are White or Latino.                                                  

No woman or man intends to become addicted to something that takes control of her or his life away from her or him. Only professional help accommodates such a restoration of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (Jefferson). We should encourage our elected political servants to ponder the position expressed here.