Editorial: Let’s fight drugs with treatment

Friday, Sept. 12, 2003 | 9:15 a.m.

From Alaska to Florida, drug abuse is one of the biggest problems in the country. It's certainly a major problem in Nevada, where costs related to substance abuse -- including those for jails, prisons, courts, health care and lost productivity -- are estimated by a state agency to be $1 billion a year. And the cost in human suffering in Nevada and around the country is incalculable.

Given the extent of the problem, there should be a greater focus on treatment. Last year, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a federal agency, 22 million Americans abused drugs or alcohol. Of those, 7.7 million -- 3.3 percent of the population -- were abusing illicit drugs to the extent that they needed treatment. And 18.6 million people -- 7.9 percent of the population -- needed treatment for alcoholism. But only 1.4 million received treatment for their drug problem and only 1.5 million were treated for their alcohol problem.

Nevada's statistics are even more troubling. The state Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Abuse says 13 percent of Nevada's population currently needs treatment, well above the national average. The National Survey backed up the statistic, last year giving Nevada its No. 1 ranking for per capita illicit-drug dependency. Yet the total of state and federal funds for drug abuse programs, 30 percent of which are not related to treatment, is only in the $15 million range annually. This, to combat a problem that costs us $1 billion annually.

Billions are spent nationally on the effort to keep drugs off the streets, with very limited success. We would like to see treatment programs, which have proven much more effective, given funding that would be truly proportionate to the size of the problem. Then, in a few years, it's possible we wouldn't need so much money for jails, prisons, courts, and health care.