Drugs and Rehabilitation
COH318

The current drug policy in the United States is ineffective. The war on drugs costs the Federal and State government a total of $47,136,706,050.00, and rising every second. While the prices are rising, people are simultaneously destroying lives and punishing victims. Rehabilitation is a sensible, cost effective alternative and has been shown to be more effective in producing change. The ultimate goal of drug rehab is to enable the individual to achieve lasting abstinence from drug use. The price of locking up drug offenders rises as the amount of space lessens in our prisons. The cost to put a single drug dealer is about $450,000 and the cost for arrest and conviction is $150,000. The same $450,000 can provide treatment and/or education for about 200 people. In consideration, putting a person in prison produces about fifteen dollars in related welfare costs, for every dollar spent on incarceration. Every dollar spent on treatment and education saves about five dollars relating to welfare costs. States are spending more money on prisons than education. Over the course of the last 20 years, the amount of money spent on prisons was increased by 570% while that spent on elementary and secondary education was increased by only 33%. Most states are facing hefty budget deficits, and with approximately 80 percent or more of total incarcerations are drug related in some way. It is also forcing state lawmakers to restructure non-violent drug offender sentences. Some are reacting by decriminalizing smaller possession charges and first time offenders, though that is not a total solution. With an average cost of nearly $30,000 per inmate per year, multiple year sentences add up. Add on to that amount that the families of inmates typically end up receiving financial support as well. There is an answer to this quandary, and it’s called effective rehabilitation and prevention. Unfortunately our correctional system does little to correct the behavior of the criminals. There must be true rehabilitation available for inmates to reduce relapsing, and they certainly have the time to work at it. On such program that is continually producing effective results throughout the world is the Narconon Program. Narconon literally means “narcotics-none” and was founded by a former heroin addict name William Benitez in Arizona State Prison in 1966. Thirty-seven years later, Narconon is still considered a new, proven approach to ending addiction through the drug rehabilitation. This program is totally drug-free and it consists of communication and confronting exercises, sauna detoxification to rid the body of the old drug residues and a series of courses that empower former addicts through learning life skills. The practical workability of the Narconon program’s social education model continually achieves extremely high success rates for helping individuals to overcome their addiction and become happy, ethical and productive members of society while remaining stable and drug-free. While pointing out the overview of our world and drug users, we should also look at where it all begins, with the future leaders of this country and what they are seeing and being taught at such an early age. Young people are taught in our schools that morals, right and wrong, depend upon the situation. Teachers use the concept of Value Clarification to instruct students that their desires represent valid moral and ethical values. Many of these young people have come of age and are among the nation’s highest leaders. Our society is experiencing an amazing array of educational events. Our schools offer our young people a “value-free” morally neutral education. Teachers refuse to tell students what is right and what is wrong and students are encouraged to decide for themselves. The results are now apparent. Drug use by teenagers is 59% less when parents set clear rules. Drug use among teenagers participating in school related activities was 50% of the rate for those students not participating. Drug use was 2.4 times higher among non-religious students than for those participating in religious activities. There are two basic philosophies of morals and ethics which show that one adheres to an objective standards of right and wrong. These may be the standards one encounters in the Ten Commandments, the other views right and wrong as fluids and changing depending on the situation and the desired outcome. This is the philosophy of much of “postmodern” society. It is vital that you understand these two ethical positions and the consequences that have come about because they affect our way of life. They affect your health and safety, they affect crime, they affect business, they affect government, they affect your future. Our secular school are not teaching objective moral standards. You will not observe objective moral standards on network TV programs. It is vitally important that our families and our churches pick up the slack and re-establish basic objective moral principles among out people. The way the United States spend so much more money than necessary, is being shown in everyday life because our prisons are overflowing with people who are in trouble for drug convictions. Changing this system should include more victims of drug use be put to rehabilitation. When will we give up this idiotic crusade, which has not stopped drug use but has trashed the Constitution, corrupted the rule of law, violated our right to be secure in our homes, destroyed our financial privacy, turned inner city neighborhoods into war zones, and provided excuses for America to have control of the world.