Sunday’s column: Saving addicts, saving money
The “stars” of this documentary produced recently in the Roanoke Valley are black and white, male and female, older and younger.
They probably look like your friends and neighbors.
What they have in common is each of their lives spiraled out of control and into crime because of addiction.
Now, each is sober and productive thanks to drug court, a program that began here and has spread across the commonwealth over the past 15 years.
As certain state lawmakers make an attempt to cut funding for that program, its graduates are speaking out and telling their stories in the documentary, “The Arrest is Only the Beginning – How Virginia Drug Courts Succeed.”
The DVD has been distributed to our state lawmakers in Richmond. And you can see it above.
- There’s the three-decade heroin addict, now in his 50s, who’s been in recovery since 2000 and now has a master’s degree and is a drug counselor.
- And a small business owner who employs 12. She got into cocaine in her 30s and used to spend weekends alone at home, with the blinds drawn, smoking crack.
- And the young woman who got hooked as a college student. She’s now a registered nurse.
Their names are not important for this column, although they’re in the video.
What is important is the story they tell about what saved them from prison and their formerly addicted selves.
It was drug court.
January 31, 2010 - 7:44 AM
We can cut some teachers to pay for drug court.
Henry, are you being dense on purpose? Drug court saves the taxpayer huge amounts of money. Or maybe you prefer paying to throw people in prison or to re-arrest them when they reuse after prison.
I just realized that I know one of the people in this video. Thank goodness she got the help she needed.
What we can cut is the portion of the DEA dedicated to the failed 40 year “war on drugs” – that will generate plenty of money to use for drug court.
We have to cut somewhere to pay for it. Money doesn’t grow on trees.
Good idea, Kristen.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that average per prisoner expenditure in state prisons is $22650 annually. Reluctantly I am willing to permit the courts an opportunity to avoid that expense with the program described in this column. It may not work in all cases,but it if preferable to spending $23 grand a year to lock them up.
Ron, it works MUCH better than locking them up.
Don’t worry, Henry, the Republican budget will end up in plenty of laid-off teachers. And cops. And highway workers (including private company subcontractors).
We gain nothing by locking up addicts. Why would anyone be reluctant to – after decades and millions spent on failure – try something new? It’s encouraging to see some new thinking and experimentation on this front.