Two important events happened in Maine this week to energize efforts at treating addiction. One was a community forum in Bangor with the country’s top drug abuse official, himself an addict in recovery. The second was the announcement of $7.5 million in federal funding for drug abuse work in 19 Maine communities.
Too often, addiction is viewed as a problem that afflicts others — who are labeled as less educated, poor or weak-willed. They’re assigned other failings to further separate them from us. The wide-ranging discussion held at Husson University on Wednesday evening, coupled with the premiere at that event of a video produced by the Bangor Daily News, is an important part of the work to dispel that myth. People battling addiction are our coworkers, our neighbors, our friends, our family members. To help them succeed, judgment needs to be set aside.
The featured speaker at the town hall forum, titled “Pain That Kills: Confronting Bangor’s Opiate Epidemic,” was Michael Botticelli, acting director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy. As a recovering addict, he is the first so-called “drug czar” with acknowledged first-hand experience with substance abuse.
Botticelli said he was introduced to alcohol at an early age and battled alcoholism before giving it up more than 20 years ago. “My personal story is very illustrative of what we see with people who go on to significant addiction later in life,” he told The Associated Press.
His story also illustrates that addiction can be overcome — with support, help and understanding, not condemnation and shaming. Only 19 percent of addicts end up seeking treatment, Botticelli said at the Bangor forum. This is a tragedy fueled by a stigma reserved for addiction and not other chronic illnesses that plague our society. As Botticelli reiterated, jailing addicts has been a costly failure, both in terms of humanity and financial resources.
Yet, Gov. Paul LePage has focused on enforcement. On Tuesday, his office announced the state would receive $905,102 from the Department of Justice over two years for work responding to methamphetamines. The money will allow the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency to hire four new drug agents and equipment to respond to meth labs.
So far this year, MDEA has responded to 20 methamphetamine labs across the state — as many as in all of 2013. In 2012, 32 people were arrested for methamphetamine-related crimes; 51 were arrested in 2013, according to a news release from LePage’s office.
The rising toll and cost of addiction were primary reasons for the forum, said Bangor Mayor Ben Sprague, who asked Botticelli to come to Bangor after Sprague read a report from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services on the price of drug and alcohol abuse in Maine. In 2010, this abuse cost Maine $1.4 billion, the report said, a 56 percent increase from 2005. The costs include medical care, premature deaths, lost work productivity, crime and incarceration — 54 percent of Maine prison inmates meet drug dependence or abuse criteria.
Despite these large financial and societal costs, only 3.4 percent of this $1.4 billion cost in 2010 went toward treatment.
The $7.5 million federal grant announced Wednesday by Botticelli’s office puts the focus on treatment. The Drug-Free Communities Support Program, which has awarded funds to 680 community programs this year, provides financial help for work on youth substance abuse. Nineteen Maine communities will share the federal grant.
The money will continue to fund work done by the Bangor Public Health Advisory Board Substance Abuse Prevention Task Force, the Community Alcohol and Drug Education Team/ Aroostook Substance Abuse Prevention in Caribou and and the Healthy Sebasticook Valley Coalition in Pittsfield, among many others. First-time Maine grantees include the Westbrook School Department and River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition in Rumford.
“The philosophy behind the DFC Program is that local drug problems require local solutions,” its website says.
This federal funding will help support local solutions, which will come when communities confront the reality that addiction is widespread and that those who are addicted deserve the chance to reclaim their lives.