The health antidote to a heroin surge

Attorney General Eric Holder calls a rise in heroin use a 'health crisis.' He's right to focus on the health aspect – intervention, prevention, treatment. Addiction itself is not a crime but a cause for cure.

|
AP Photo
Susan White, a resident of Springfield, Vt., looks over booking photos displayed at a Vermont State Police news conference to discuss the arrest of 36 people as part of a drug sweep. In his State of the State address Jan. 8, Gov. Peter Shumlin called for treatment and education in addition to law enforcement as the best way to meet the state's growing challenge from the abuse of heroin and other opiates.

A rising level of addiction to heroin and other opiates has become an “urgent public health crisis” in the United States, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday. He didn’t say “public criminal justice crisis,” which one might have expected from the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.

Rather, Mr. Holder rightly focused on health – or how to prevent and treat addictive behavior, with an emphasis on each person’s right to health.

The Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Administration will still focus on criminal trafficking of lethal drugs. Heroin use in particular has more than doubled in the US between 2007 and 2012 while federal seizures of the drug at the Mexican border have tripled.

And with the prominent death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman last month from a mix of hard drugs, the issue of heroin abuse has been thrust into the spotlight. From 2006 to 2010, the US saw a 45 percent increase in such heroin overdoses.

Today’s heroin is less expensive, more potent, and, as Holder noted, used by more Americans “from every background and walk of life.” In January, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin devoted his entire State of the State message to the heroin crisis in his bucolic state. Holder noted that heroin-related deaths had jumped fourfold in northern Ohio.

As governments have made headway against the abuse of prescription painkillers, more addicts are turning to heroin. About 80 percent of heroin users have previously taken pain medication without a prescription.

Reversing this trend, as Holder said, requires the help of families, professional healers, teachers, police, and community leaders. Many antidrug programs targeted at young teens are known to be effective. And more judges are requiring mandatory treatment for convicted drug users rather than jail time.

In the US, only about 1 in 3 drug users receives treatment intervention. Yet every $1 in treatment saves between $4 and $12 in reduced crime and health-care costs, according to studies. The best approach is to reach adolescents before they are introduced to drugs. Parents and religious groups can instill a spiritual and moral purpose that will diminish the temptation for a young person to try mood-altering drugs.

Addicts often steal to buy drugs. But the compassionate view is to regard the addiction itself as a condition to be cured. Addicts need a multitude of support for their recovery, from loving care to a job to a restoration of broken relationships. To help prevent drug deaths, 17 states now offer limited immunity to those who seek medical help for someone who appears to be overdosing.

The attorney general’s warning should serve to look beyond enforcement of antidrug laws and improve each state’s treatment and intervention programs. Drug selling, buying, and use are still crimes. But dealing with addiction requires seeing health as available and possible for the addict.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to The health antidote to a heroin surge
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2014/0311/The-health-antidote-to-a-heroin-surge
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe