Commentary: Breaking the Cycle of Drugs, Alcohol and Crime

By Susan Richardson | May 4, 2012 | 4 Comments | Filed in Community Related,Drugs, Legal, Recovery, Treatment & Youth


Almost two million American youth need treatment for alcohol and other drug use or abuse. But only 1 in 20 will receive treatment.

Research shows that teens with substance abuse problems are more likely to break the law, behave violently or drop out of school. In fact, 4 out of 5 young people in the juvenile justice system commit crimes while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Young people need to be held accountable when they break the law. Unless they receive treatment for a substance abuse problem that helped them get in trouble in the first place, they will often find themselves back in juvenile court again and again.

That’s where Reclaiming Futures comes in. By connecting juvenile courts with treatment providers and community members, we help teens overcome drugs, alcohol and crime.

We accomplish this by creating teams of juvenile court judges, probation officers, substance abuse treatment professionals and community members. Using an evidence-based six-step model, the team works together to ensure that teens get the treatment and services they need, while tracking their progress and identifying service gaps.

So how does the model work?

Step 1: Initial Screening: As soon as possible after being referred to the juvenile justice system, youth are screened for possible substance abuse problems.

Step 2: Initial Assessment: Teens with possible substance abuse problems are assessed using a reputable tool to measure their use of alcohol and other drugs, individual and family risks, needs and strengths. This allows the team to measure the severity of the problem, which informs the treatment plan.

Step 3: Service Coordination: The team designs and coordinates an intervention plan that is family driven, spans agency boundaries and draws upon community-based resources.

Step 4: Initiation: Treatment begins.

Step 5: Engagement: The team engages both the teens and their families and follows up with them during treatment.

Step 6: Transition: Teens transition out of agency-based treatment services. The team makes sure that kids and their families have community resources and support in place, in order to lower the risk of relapse and recidivism.

It’s essential for the family and community to be involved throughout the process because almost every young person who appears in juvenile court eventually returns home. In order to stay drug and crime free, teens need positive mentors and caring adults in their lives. They also need help with completing school and finding a job, which is why Step 6 is so important – troubled young people need help transitioning from the juvenile system to a happy and productive adult life.

We’re not the only ones who understand the importance of connecting teens with quality treatment and care. The ObamaAdministration’s 2012 National Drug Control Strategy prioritizes treatment and coordinated care to people struggling with addiction. As part of the Strategy, we are working with the Administration to spread our model throughout the United States to improve treatment for youth involved with the juvenile justice system. We believe we are a solution for the entire nation.

To learn more about Reclaiming Futures, please visitwww.reclaimingfutures.org.

Susan Richardson, National Executive Director for Reclaiming Futures

Beware of Drunk Drivers on Memorial Day Weekend

By Join Together Staff | May 24, 2012 | Leave a comment | Filed in Alcohol &Prevention


Drunk drivers are a threat on the road during Memorial Day weekend, warns Fox Business. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 397 people died over the three-day weekend in 2010, the latest year for which data is available. Of those crashes, 40 percent were alcohol-related.

In 2010, more than 10,000 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes—one every 51 minutes, notes the NHTSA. The agency has found fatal crashes involving an alcohol-impaired driver are more likely on weekends and at night, the article notes.

Alcohol interferes with a person’s coordination, driving skills and judgment. Drinking can cause people to lose control and become aggressive, which can in turn affect driving skills.

Drinking can affect the brain for hours, and may even influence a person’s driving the next morning, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Caffeine won’t help to reduce the effects of alcohol on the body.

The NIAAA pamphlet, “Rethinking Holiday Drinking,” recommends that people who do decide to drink should not have more than one drink per hour. Make every other drink a nonalcoholic one, and pick a designated driver to get you home safely. A designated driver should be someone who has not had anything to drink, not just the person in your group who had the least to drink.

U.S. Looks to Other Nations for Addiction Treatment Ideas: Kerlikowske

By Join Together Staff | May 23, 2012 | 5 Comments | Filed in Addiction,Drugs, Government & Treatment


The United States is looking to other nations for ideas on how to treat addiction as a disease, the U.S. Director of National Drug Control Policy said Tuesday. Gil Kerlikowske, who spoke during a visit to London, said the Obama Administration wants to speak to drug addiction experts in other countries to learn whether elements of their programs could work in the United States, according toReuters.

Kerlikowske has visited Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Colombia and other South American countries to see different types of drug treatment programs, the article notes. He said the approach to drug addiction in Portugal was somewhat successful. Since 2001, authorities in that country have focused their efforts on prevention messages and treatment, and stopped arrests, trials and imprisonment of people who carry a personal supply of drugs.

He said the U.S. is taking a more balanced approach to substance use, with an emphasis on treatment instead of law enforcement. He urged the international community to work together on substance abuse prevention and treatment programs, to stop the cycle of drug use, criminal acts, imprisonment, release, and re-arrest.

Last week, the Office of National Drug Control Policy released a report that it said showed the importance of addressing the nation’s drug problem not just as a criminal justice issue, but as a public health issue.

The report showed a decline in cocaine use since 2003, which indicates that law enforcement efforts and public educationcampaigns may be having an effect. Illegal drug use overall has decreased about 30 percent since 1979.

An average of 71 percent of men arrested in 10 U.S. metropolitan areas in 2011 tested positive for an illegal substance when they were taken into custody, the study found. The rates ranged from 64 percent in Atlanta, to 81 percent in Sacramento, California. These rates were higher for almost half of the collection sites since 2007.

Never Fear, the New D.S.M. Won’t “Create More Addicts”

Last week’s New York Times article, “Addiction Diagnoses May Rise Under Guideline Changes,” offers a sadly pejorative take on the proposed changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M.—the go-to manual for mental health (including substance use disorder) diagnoses. The reporter writes that the rewritten D.S.M. “could result in millions more people being diagnosed as addicts.”

There are a couple of problems with this speculation. First, people are not diagnosed “as addicts.” This is because there is no diagnosis of “addiction”—not in the current DSM or the revised version. To characterize the diagnosis of substance use disorders this way simply shows the extent to which stigma and depreciatory attitudes about this illness remain.

Second, the new D.S.M. would do one important and enormously beneficial thing: it would allow problematic and/or harmful drug use to be identified and diagnosed earlier. This is the first time Medicaid/Medicare have reimbursed effective services for people who misuse substances—not just for folks who qualify as chemically dependent. This is where programs like Phoenix House’s SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral to Treatment) come in. These programs, along with the new D.S.M., will help us catch and treat substance use problems before they become life-threatening—and before they require the expensive treatments that the Times article references. The fact that SBIRT is now available and funded is no small feat; to quote Dr. Keith Humphreys, former drug control policy adviser to the White House, this is in fact “the single biggest expansion in the quality and quantity of addiction treatment this country has seen in 40 years.”

Third, the article paints a ridiculous picture of the guys who wrote the new D.S.M. They aren’t money-grubbing evil scientists who take money from pharmaceutical companies to support an elaborate research ruse. I know many of these researchers—they’re passionate about the cause, and the D.S.M. is their labor of love. They put in a great deal of work with their efforts to better characterize the DSM categories, which will allow more people to get help. Why would The New York Times be so one-sided in criticizing these efforts? In reality, these researchers are the ones who want to help people the most.

So never fear, the new D.S.M. will not cause more people to be diagnosed with addiction. Instead, more people who may not yet be addicted (but whose drug use is nonetheless problematic and unhealthy) will be able to access very inexpensive but proven effective treatment earlier and easier. Treating these folks is no different from treating those in the early stages ofdiabetes—it requires minimal professional help, some education, and simple lifestyle changes. We wouldn’t wait until a pre-diabetic started experiencing the symptoms of full-blown diabetes before we offered him or her help. Instead, we would intervene early in hopes of preventing such a difficult future. The same should apply for those with early substance misuse.

Deni Carise, Ph.D.
Chief Clinical Officer
Phoenix House

Recovery Advocates to Be Recognized at National Event

By Join Together Staff | May 17, 2012 | Leave a comment | Filed in Addiction& Recovery

Four activists and a grassroots community organization will be recognized for their work as recovery advocates by Faces & Voices of Recovery. The addiction recovery advocacy organization will present the awards Wednesday, June 27 in Washington, D.C.

The awards honor the recipients’ contributions to advocating for the rights of people and their families in or seeking recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs.

Recipients of the award are Rev. Dr. Robert Gilmore, Sr., of Real Urban Ministry in Houston; Walter Ginter of the National Alliance for Medication-Assisted Recovery in New York; Rosemary Tisch of Celebrating Families in Saratoga, California, Jeff Blodget of St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Massachusetts Organization for Addiction Recovery in Boston.

To read more about the awardees and the event, visit the Faces & Voices of Recovery website.

Commentary: 6 Tips to Protect Your Child From Online Drug Threats

By David Festinger, PhD | April 17, 2012 | 1 Comment | Filed in Alcohol, Drugs,Parenting, Young Adults & Youth


Many people in Philadelphia were stunned by a recent report thatstudents in one community had been depicted on YouTube drinking and taking other drugs.

It’s not entirely clear what people were most shocked by – the realization that kids abuse drugs and alcohol, that videos glorifying the use of drugs and alcohol appear on the Internet or simply the fact that this was done by local students.

The fact that kids abuse dangerous substances is definitely not new. Findings from the Monitoring the Future Study (2010) indicated that in the prior year alone, 1.8 million kids under the age of 18 reported using drugs for the first time – that’s almost 5,000 kids each day. In addition, 48 percent used illicit drugs. What’s more staggering is that these estimates do not include alcohol.

The existence of online media that promote drug and alcohol use is also not a recent phenomenon. Research conducted by our team at the Treatment Research Institute has catalogued hundreds of YouTube videos, chat rooms, social networking venues and other online sites that extol the virtues of drugs, provide information about how to use drugs “safely” and even teach kids how to manufacture and sell drugs.

Although most of us are aware of the influence that friends, peers, television and movies may have on our children’s perceptions of drug and alcohol use, many people are not aware of the incredible prevalence of pro-drug use propaganda and misinformation available on the Internet.

The fact that this happened in someone’s backyard may have been the thing that caught local attention, but the prevalence of these online drug threats are the issues – at the local level and nationally – that we should be most concerned about. Similar to strategies taken to safeguard our children against online predation, there are many ways to protect them from these pro-drug and alcohol use influences.

The Treatment Research Institute has developed a training program for parents that provides practical recommendations to help them defend their children from these online drug threats. Some of the most basic recommendations include:

• Setting limits on Internet use and availability depending on the age and maturity of the child. (These limits need to be discussed with the child – see below.)
• Monitoring your child’s Internet use and making use of commercially available parent controls. Placing the computer in a central area of your home can make this easier.
• Having a formal or informal contract with children about the proper use of the Internet and making clear the consequences for misuse. (Be sure to follow through with those consequences when misuse occurs.)
• Having children walk parents through the places they go online, and who they communicate with (their contacts).
• Discussing your house rules related to Internet use with the parents of the friends your child visits. Make sure that your child is not able to engage in unmonitored or inappropriate Internet use while at their friends’ homes.
• Remaining calm and having a plan as to what to do if you discover inappropriate use. (Keep in mind that children are naturally curious and there can be many reasons why they happen upon a particular website. Don’t overreact!)

Technology has made many things possible. While the Internet serves as an amazing tool that can greatly benefit our children, we must also be conscious of its potential dangers.

The writer is a Senior Scientist at the Treatment Research Institute, an independent, nonprofit research and development organization dedicated to science-driven transformation of treatment, other practice and policy in substance use and abuse.