A Reuters report this week stated that the Obama administration’s drug czar plans to spend more money on treating addiction.
As head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske coordinates the efforts of 32 government agencies to limit illicit drug use. He has been in office less than a month, but the Obama administration has already taken a less confrontational approach to the nation's 35 million illegal drug users.
Mr. Kerlikowske said he hopes to ditch the chest-thumping military rhetoric at the center of
"We should stop using the metaphor about the war on drugs," said Kerlikowske, a career police officer who headed the Justice Department's community-policing initiative under President Clinton. "People look at it as a war on them, and frankly we're not at war with the people of this country."
This is a human issue and one that Narconon Suncoast is dedicated to. Drug rehabilitation programs are needed in every town and every city in every state of this Country to solve the increasing drug problem that we are faced with today.
Mr. Kerlikowske said a more balanced approach was needed, with greater emphasis on drug treatment programs, especially in prisons.
"It's clear that if they go to prison and they have a drug problem and you don't treat it and they return ... to the same neighborhood from whence they came that you are going to have the same problem," he said. "Quite frankly people in neighborhoods, police officers, et cetera, are tired of recycling the problem. Let's try and fix it."
President Obama has proposed a budget for the fiscal year starting in October that boosts funding for substance abuse programs by 4 percent to $3.6 billion.
Local governments should spend less time and effort prosecuting nonviolent drug users – these are people that need workable drug treatment programs, not jail time. They should be helped by their own communities. Narconon Suncoast is assisting local residents in
The government has finite resources and those resources will be devoted to the people who pose the most danger to the community. While that is being done on the local and state levels, we as citizens in communities across the country have job of helping our neighbors and cleaning up our neighborhoods of drugs.
For the full Reuters Story: http://www.reuters.com/article/wtUSInvestingNews/idUSTRE55750K20090608
