Drug Addiction: Treat or Incarcerate?

Anyone dealing with a drug addict, or someone in the grips of drug addiction, knows the feeling: that sinking hopeless feeling of watching that person throw their life away.

"More often than not, the drug addict has a tremendous potential," comments Mary Rieser, Executive Director for Narconon Drug Rehab Georgia. "They usually were someone who was very bright, usually charming, with a lot of promise. But as they progress from casual drug use to full blown addiction, that person has changed.

"It is no wonder that sometimes parents would rather see that person put in jail than continue to throw their life away. After all, life in jail is better than being dead, isn't it?"

Recent studies have shown that jail does little to treat a drug addict, and in most cases, soon revert to drug use after being incarcerated. So does jail work?

"The judicial system seems to think it does," comments Ms. Rieser. "The laws of the land are very hard on the drug user, and while we cannot condone theft, robbery, embezzlement, and the lying and cheating that accompanies most drug addiction, we can be wise in dealing with it.

"Narconon Drug Rehab in Georgia was originally started as a treatment program for non-violent offenders. A judge let me use the Narconon protocol on drug offenders and drug addicts to see if rehabilitation was a better route than incarceration, Our results 7 years ago and today show that fewer people revert to drugs or criminal behavior after completing the program than they would if they had not done a drug rehab program and simply gone to jail.”

National surveys show this to be the case, and leading policy makers agree:

Barry R. McCaffrey, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said, "It is clear that we cannot arrest our way out of the problem of chronic drug abuse and drug-driven crime. We cannot continue to apply policies and programs that do not deal with the root causes of substance abuse and attendant crime. Nor should we expect to continue to have the widespread societal support for our counter-drug programs if the American people begin to believe these programs are unfair.”

While imprisoning offenders may provide comfort to some in terms of public safety, it does little to reduce the cluster of issues which will see these people cycle in and out of the nation’s corrections system. What is needed is a solution less costly than building more prisons and more effective at reducing recidivism. The good news is, the solution already exists.

Call Narconon Drug Rehab in Georgia at 1-877-413-3073 .
      
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