Drug czar pushes to lift addiction stigma, celebrate recovery
President Barack Obama’s top drug policy adviser called for an expansion of community-based drug treatment and recovery programs on Monday, hoping more Americans might recover from substance abuse.
In what was touted as a major speech at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage almost one year after Ford’s passing, National Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske also urged the recovery community to come together to fight the stigma surrounding addiction and encouraging more people to seek treatment to achieve recovery.
“Our nation’s drug problem should be treated as a public health issue, not just a criminal justice issue,” he said. “Too many laws and regulations that were established for the purpose of punishing or deterring drug use make no distinction between the person who continues to use drugs and the person who is on the pathway to recovery.”
Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Palm Springs, joined Kerlikowske, turning the attention from street drugs to medicine cabinets.
“Two classes of medicines — painkillers and insomnia and anxiety drugs — are responsible for about 70 deaths and nearly 3,000 emergency room visits a day,” she said. “These are alarming numbers. As a nation, we must do more to combat this growing public health epidemic.”
According to estimates from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 8 percent of Americans age 12 or older — about 21 million people — needed but did not receive substance abuse treatment at a specialty facility in 2010.
As a result, the Obama administration announced it is making an unprecedented effort to bring treatment and recovery into the center of discussions about drug policy.
“Over the last 30 years, we have witnessed almost 100,000 women and men begin the journey of recovery,” said John Schwarzlose, CEO of the Betty Ford Center. “People recover from addictive disease every day in many different ways. It is important that people suffering from substance use disorders and their loved ones have hope and confidence in their ability to do well,”
