Jobs elude former drug addicts

Throughout the job interview, Georgia Evans waited anxiously for the question to be asked: Have you ever had a drug or alcohol problem?

When it wasn't, she didn't volunteer the information.

It was a tough call. Honesty is at the heart of her recovery from a 13-month crack addiction. But so is having a job.

She saw the omission as her only pragmatic alternative in a culture that can harbor deep suspicions of recovering addicts at the same time it touts the importance of overcoming drug and alcohol addictions.

Ms. Evans had three previous interviews for jobs for which she was more than qualified. In those, she'd been upfront about what she calls her "dumb mistake," as well as the hard-won recovery she's both proud of and profoundly grateful for. She was turned down for them all.

"A lot of people fear people in treatment.... They think we're all thieves or something," she says. "If anything, it's taught me ... that whatever you do, you try to do your best."

As treatment rather than prison slowly gains momentum as a way to deal with the seemingly intransigent drug problem, it's also fueling a national movement dedicated to fighting the kind of discrimination millions of people like Evans face every day.

Experts in treatment and recovery estimate that when a recovering addict is honest, he or she will get turned down for a job 75 percent of the time – even though the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) outlaws discrimination against people in recovery. And if the person also has a drug conviction – which is common – he or she is also banned from receiving government-education loans and grants, low-cost housing, and welfare.

Such policies were instituted to discourage drug use, but advocates of more liberal treatment of former addicts say they potentially will undermine the nation's effort to grapple with its drug problem.

"Hope for the future is what keeps people in recovery, and blatant and systematic discrimination destroys that hope," says former CNN anchor Susan Rook, a recovering addict who's now a treatment advocate. "Recovery is scary, painful, frustrating, and then, after doing that ... we are punished for the best thing that we've ever done, then how in the world can you make an argument to the next person you're trying to convince to give recovery a try?"

Although the ADA outlaws discrimination against recovering addicts, the courts have given that wide interpretation. For instance, in 1997, an appeals court found that alcoholics were not covered unless they sustained some permanent, debilitating condition. But in 2000, in a case that challenged a zoning ban on methadone clinics, a court held that the ADA did cover the recovering addicts using the clinics. The ban was overturned.

But advocacy groups say that even with the ADA protection, discrimination remains widespread, primarily because few recovering addicts want to fight it. Most are simply concerned with getting on with their lives.

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