Pubdate: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY) Copyright: 2004 Lexington Herald-Leader Contact: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) A BETTER WEAPON Fund, Expand Drug Treatment Program When Lt. Gov. Steve Pence says that "we cannot and will not incarcerate our way out of this drug problem," people should sit up and listen. A former federal prosecutor, Pence has spent the better part of a year leading a search for answers to Kentucky's drug abuse crisis. Any effective solution, he says, will require a greater commitment to education, demand-reduction and treatment, while continuing to stress enforcement. Incarceration alone may not be the answer, but it can provide a perfect opportunity for the other critical elements: education, demand-reduction and treatment. It's a time when the 60 percent of inmates who are addicts have a better chance of getting clean; when, as one former cocaine trafficker told Herald-Leader reporter Sarah Vos, a jail sentence can become "a blessing." Unfortunately, the recovery program which was that inmate's salvation could die of lack of funding. No one questions the value of the Hope Therapeutic Program. But the grants that once funded it at the Fayette County jail have run out. And the Hope Center, which runs the jail program as well as a shelter and programs for the homeless, can no longer afford to keep it going. City and state officials should, if necessary, dig deep to save the program, to expand it to include female prisoners and to take it or other drug-rehab programs to other county jails that have, all together, a population of 6,400 inmates. No comprehensive study of the program's recidivism rates has been undertaken, but what is known is encouraging. In two years, 156 men have completed at least two months of the four-month Hope program before release, and only 13 have been rearrested in Fayette County. Treatment may cost more in the beginning, but it's much cheaper in the long run than prison and all the other costs of addiction and addiction-fueled crime. The futility of trying to incarcerate our way out of the drug problem was nicely illustrated by a news article that appeared alongside the one about the treatment program's funding woes. Under an Owensboro dateline, we read that members of the illegal drug trade have responded to Kentucky's crackdown on the availability of methamphetamine ingredients by buying their supplies in other states. Pence and the other members of his drug control assessment summit are right when they say that we can never whip the drug crisis without drastically reducing the demand for illegal drugs. And treating addicts and abusers while they're in jail is one way to do that. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D