by Lisa Frederiksen
I follow the daily posts of Join Together, now a project of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, formerly a project of Boston University School of Public Health since its founding in 1991. At their “About Us” section on their website, they write, “Join Together has been the nation’s leading provider of information, strategic planning assistance, and leadership development for community-based efforts to advance effective alcohol and drug policy, prevention, and treatment. We believe problems associated with alcohol and drugs can be best addressed at the community level. Our mission is expressed in our name. Join Together helps community leaders understand and use the most current scientifically valid prevention and treatment approaches.”
Yesterday, I received an email urging me to let my legislators know my thoughts on “a major report from The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA*) at Columbia University shows that state governments spend, on average, over 15 percent of their entire budgets on substance abuse and addiction and its consequences.
“The worst part is that for every dollar states spend on this problem, 94 cents goes to “shovel up” the consequences in public programs such as health care, criminal justice, education, child welfare and mental health — and only about 2 pennies go to prevention, treatment and research programs to reduce this burden. This upside-down public policy wastes billions in taxpayer dollars at a time when resources are scarce, and results in untold human suffering.”
I’ve sent the letter to the two legislators representing my district and our Governor and urge you to do the same to yours. Here is the link to get involved. It’s easy. Once you are at this site, scroll down and you’ll find links to state-by-state spending, executive summary of the report and the report, itself. Click on the state-by-state spending link, and it will guide you from there. (It really is easy.)
Thanks for your help in raising awareness about this upside down spending. Prevention, treatment and research can make a huge difference – not only in the lives of the alcoholics, but in the lives of the more than half of all American adults who report having a close relative with a drinking problem and the one in four children who will live with alcohol abuse or alcoholism or both before the age of 18.
