Pubdate: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 Source: Herald American (NY) Website: http://www.syracuse.com/ Address: P.O. Box 4915, Syracuse, N.Y. 13221-4915 Contact: 2000, Syracuse Post-Standard Forum: http://www.syracuse.com/forums/ Author: Nicolas Eyle, executive director, ReconsiDer: Forum on Drug Policy TREATMENT DATA MAY BE MISLEADING The opening two sentences in Sunday's editorial about drug courts (Treat or Punish ? ) prompt some important questions not discussed in the piece. "The law can regard drug addiction as a crime to be punished. Or the law can regard drug addiction as a disease to be treated." First of all, if the law regards drug addiction as a disease, an idea questioned by many in the medical profession, does the law have the right to sentence those afflicted? What other disease does the law force into treatment? Cancer? Diabetes? By definition, a disease is a personal medical or public health problem, not a law-enforcement problem. According to Judges Tormey and McKinney, if someone enrolled in this program fails to meet the conditions and requirements (they fall off the wagon and use drugs) "they go right back to the justice system -- and likely to jail." What other disease treatment program throws patients out if they have a relapse? If someone undergoing chemotherapy for cancer fails to show up for an appointment, are they denied further treatment? If a diabetic stops giving himself his insulin injections, is he punished by the doctor? If we are going to regard drug addiction as a disease we must be consistent and treat it as one. Diseases are not crimes, no matter how unpopular they are. The effectiveness of court-mandated treatment is presented as unquestionably effective when a close look at the numbers don't bear this out. Onondaga County has one of the highest arrest rates for drug offenses of any county in the state. Over 2000 arrests last year for marijuana alone, yet the statistics cited for this county's successes with their experiments with drug courts are based on only 300 cases! Let's not be so quick to accept these numbers as reliable. While there is little question that treatment is cheaper than prison, neither is particularly effective at reducing drug use. Arizona has had drug courts in place for many years and recently completed a comprehensive study of how well it's working. The numbers are worth looking at: The Arizona study was reported in the press as having a 78% success rate. Actually, that figure is rather misleading. If you define success as having the offender successfully complete the program, the rate drops to less than 22%. What the study says is this: "Of the 932 probationers completing a treatment program, 61.1% completed that program successfully." Note, that's the percentage of probationers who completed a treatment program, not who "entered" the program. In that context the number is much less impressive. The report also says:" 2,622 probationers began participation in ... substance abuse treatment during Fiscal Year 1998." That means 932 out of 2,622, or 35.5%, completed their treatment program, and only about 569 -- 21.7% -- of that original 2,622 successfully completed their programs. This hardly supports the idea that court-mandated treatment serves to reduce drug use. Another factor contributing to the confusion is the government's policy of considering all use abuse. All studies show that the percentage of users of drugs who actually become addicted is somewhere in the 10-20% range. Therefore, the majority of those arrested are not "addicted" in the first place. This fact alone makes all studies on the success of mandated treatment programs questionable. I am not suggesting that treatment for certain drug users is a bad idea. I'm certainly not suggesting that prison is a better solution. I'm glad to see that, after years of ReconsiDer's suggesting that prison is not the solution to our drug problem, so many respected jurists are coming over to our way of thinking. What I am suggesting is that the drug "problem" in America is growing year after year (more than half of high school seniors admit to having used an illegal drug in the past year) and we need to slow down and thoroughly study new ideas proposed to reverse this tide. If we don't we will spend years trying out some poorly thought-out plan only to find that we still have the same problem five years down the road. ************************************* Nicolas Eyle, executive director ReconsiDer: Forum on Drug Policy 205 Onondaga Ave. Syracuse, New York 13207-1439 tel:(315)422.6231 fax:(315)476.1773 e-mail: http://www.reconsider.org - --- MAP posted-by: Don Beck