Drug Rehab Needs Not Being Met By “Presidential Initiative” Grants by Rod MacTaggart : Alcohol rehab Drug rehab review 2008

While President Bush was extolling the success of the government’s war on drugs to an international audience in Washington this week - including the drug war’s provision to provide Americans with needed drug addiction treatment - the director of Iowa’s Department of Health, Tom Newton, was telling local news reporters that less than 10% of addicts in Iowa actually get the drug rehab they ask for and need.
Newton was speaking to the media after receiving a $9.4 million federal grant to help addicts, over the next three years, pay for alcohol and drug rehab, and the support services such as baby sitters, taxis and other incidental expenses they’ll need while in treatment.
Terry Cline, administrator of the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, was in Iowa to present the check to Mr. Newton. Cline told the media that nearly 24 million people across the country sought help for alcohol and drugs in 2006, but only two-and-a-half million were able to get it.
At the state level, Cline said, more than a quarter of a million Iowans were unable to receive the alcohol and drug rehab services they were seeking during 2006. Some 52,000 people who needed rehab for illicit drugs couldn't get treatment, and 209,000 sought treatment for alcohol and couldn't get it - a total of 261,000 Iowans needing couldn’t get treatment because they couldn’t afford it, and the state had no way to deliver it.
Mr. Cline said the federal grant to Iowa to help fund rehab services is a “Presidential initiative”, and it is innovative. He said the goal of any treatment is to see that people recover, so the program being funded by the grant should measure indications of recovery. These would include affordable and stable housing, staying in school as a student, decreased contact with the criminal justice system, and support for those in rehab so they don't feel isolated from society. A feeling of isolation makes people more vulnerable to relapse, Cline added.
Newton said Iowa anticipates offering drug rehab services to 800 people in the first year as the grant program gets underway, and 1,700 people in each of the next two years. In other words, 4,200 Iowans will be helped by the “Presidential initiative” policy in Iowa over the next three years. This is a far cry from helping the 52,000 illicit drug users and 209,000 alcoholics who needed it just last year alone. Let’s do the math: $9.4 million for 4,200 people to do drug rehab comes out to about $2,238.10 each.
No - it’s not even close to what’s needed in Iowa. To get everyone into drug rehab would require - at the per-person grant rate - about $584,118,000, or more than half a billion dollars just for drug rehab for everyone who needs it. And that’s just for Iowa - not a very big state. The other 49 states have much the same story to tell as Iowa - only a fraction of addicts are getting the alcohol and drug rehab they need.
So what’s needed to handle addiction in this country? It may be an impossible dream, but what if the government declared a war on drugs of the same scale as the war in Iraq? According to the government’s records, the Iraq war is costing Americans $275 million a day. Just two days of that kind of funding would handle Iowa’s alcohol and drug rehab problems!
Some states are bigger, some are smaller, so at $275 million a day we’re looking at maybe four or five months - six months max - to get everyone who needs alcohol and drug rehab paid for, enrolled and rolling.
What a concept! What a win-win situation!
If we had Iraq war kind of money to spend on rehab, we could accomplish what isn’t happening in Iraq - a victory! And 24 million Americans battling their own war on substance abuse and addiction could recover their lives, their jobs, their families, their hopes and their dreams. Alcohol and drug rehab programs could win this war without anyone firing a shot or dropping a single bomb.