Challenges and Opportunities in Drug Demand Reduction (Continued)
Melody Heaps
President and Founder
Illinois Treatment Assessment
Screening Center, Inc.
United States
Let me just very briefly talk to you about what I
think are some elemental principles having to do
with this issue. You will have a track that indeed
all afternoon and tomorrow will go through
some of the programs that have attempted to
be the bridge between public health and public
safety within the United States and with the
government of Mexico.
Let me begin by suggesting to you, that as we
in the United States have faced an increasing
illegal drug usage, and in fact even legal drug
usage, we have put the burden of handling that
problem on the criminal justice system to the
point where the justice system itself has almost
failed. It is groaning with the weight of having
to process cases in our courts, of incarcerating
individuals. If we take my state of Illinois alone,
in 1990 there were maybe 800 individuals who
were incarcerated because of drug offenses. In
the year 2000, there are almost 11,000
individuals. My state is not unique. And indeed,
we focus on those numbers only of drug
offenses but the other offenses related to drug
use which happen to be property crime offenses
have also escalated. So that the whole justice
system, that which has become a foundation for
our democracy is struggling to deal with the
issue of substance abuse. And it is therefore,
very critical that we begin to look at how we can
intervene with the justice system to bring people
out of that system into community treatment.
Particularly because we know that there is a
never ending cycle of arrest, addiction,
incarceration, release, arrest. And so the
opportunity to intervene in that cycle in a
constructive way is very important.
At the last conference, the speaker from the
government of Mexico talked about the public
safety and public health systems as interlocking
and that metaphor, I thought, was an excellent
metaphor. And what it brought to mind was how
our spaceships have space stations and shuttles
to connect. And they’ve had to connect often
between the Soviet Union and the United States
where we’ve had different technologies. If we
can apply that metaphor to public health and
public safety, the first principle is to understand
that both systems have not only different
technologies, but very, very different cultures.
And in order to bridge the gap, in order to
connect those systems, there has to be a
docking mechanism. At points along the system,
we need something very specific which allows,
as the Attorney General of Mexico spoke of this
morning, channeling of individuals whom we
don’t want to continue to prosecute or to
continue to allow to penetrate further into the
justice system and further criminalize. And so a
docking mechanism like a TASC program, or a
more recent iteration, the drug court movement,
is a mechanism which the United States has
used to move people from the justice system at
all phases, from courts to corrections, into the
community-based treatment system.
The other thing you must understand is that the
justice system provides a unique opportunity as
a catchment area to really go to what is perhaps
a hot bed of what I consider a communicable
disease. If we are not intervening and looking at
ways to treat substance abuse, individuals
within the justice system will move into the
community and that disease will spread.
The importance that the justice system can offer
the public health system is sanctions, a way to
overcome what we know to be one of the
hallmarks of our substance abuse disease model—denial. The importance of sanctions in
stimulating recovery in an individual can be met
and melded with the treatment process in such
a way as to encourage recovery as individuals
move along. I think if we begin, and if, for
instance the government of Mexico is beginning
to look at the issue of bridging both systems, it
is really critical that we understand that if we
are going to put mechanisms in the justice
system, we had better be ready with treatment
programs. For instances in our corrections
centers if we get the justice system ready to
identify drug users, we’d better have community
treatment. There ought to be dedicated
community treatment that is rich in resources.
That is obviously culturally sensitive but we
must get ready to handle the vast numbers that
seem to move from justice into treatment.
It is also important and a lesson we’ve learned
in the United States that we need to take a
strategic macro approach when we look at
forming programs and developing this bridge.
That macro approach is not by finding the latest
trick or silver bullet or program that may solve
our problem within six months. But we look at
the total justice system. We look at the
problems of usage in a community and we
decide to target areas, cases, individuals, to help
set up a systemic movement from justice into
treatment. It is critical that there be cross-cultural
training because, again, we are dealing
with individuals in each system that are used to
doing different things, thinking different ways,
and using different languages. People in the
justice system think enforcement, think
punishment. People in the treatment system
think rehabilitation. So, I suggest that these are
very, very obvious principles, but General
McCaffrey gave me permission to be obvious
today. That will help us at least conceptualize
and focus on the need to develop this new
bridge or interlocking system. And again, I
would stress to you the need to specifically look
at designing the function that will help dock, and
bring together both the public health and public
safety systems in both Mexico and The United
States. Thank you.
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