When it comes to spending tax dollars on addiction, our government is a study junkie. A new report this year from Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse finds our government spent nearly $ 500 billion on substance abuse and addiction in 2005.
What makes our government a junkie is that more than 95 percent of that money was spent on post-addiction reports and studies. Less than 2 percent – 1.9 percent – was spent on prevention and treatment. The study’s authors put it this way: For every dollar spent on addiction prevention and treatment, more than $ 50 was spent on public programs aimed at addressing the effects of addiction.
Clearly, our government is addicted to studies. That’s an enormous waste of money at a time when we already know that addictions to alcohol, drugs, cigarettes and other substances are harmful, costly and ultimately deadly. We already know that it’s wrong to get addicted to anything that takes a toll on our health and lifestyle.
When I was addicted to booze, cigarettes and eating too much, I didn’t need a study to tell me it was wrong. I knew it, and everybody else knew it, too. The worst part is that those same mounds of studies also show that addictions are preventable and also treatable. So why not plow more of that $ 500 billion into prevention and treatment?
How do we cure our government of being a study junkie?
First, pick up a pen and write to your congressional delegation. Point out the bigger bang for our buck that is going to come from preventing and treating addictions. Then get your friends to write letters, e-mail and call.
Second, write letters to newspapers, Internet blogs and local school boards demanding that more attention be paid to prevention and treatment.
Then call your prevention and treatment centers and ask what you can do to build support for more treatment versus more studies. Why spend money studying the wreckage, when we can prevent the wreck?
Yes, addicts can give up their addictions. I did, and I’m just an ordinary person who happened to have three addictions. No, it wasn’t easy. Yes, I did it anyway, and other addicts can, too.
Yes, prevention works. The U.S. smoking rate is dropping because of anti-smoking advertising, anti-smoking laws that prevent us from lighting up in public places and anti-smoking taxes making it too expensive to smoke.
Are you a study junkie, too? Instead of being that well-meaning friend inundating addicted friends with copies of studies, roll up your sleeves and ask yourself, ‘What can I do to help them quit?’
Take your friends to treatment meetings or programs. Get on your knees with friends and pray. Spend time with friends or relatives doing things that don’t make it easy for them to indulge in their addictions. Does your friend smoke or drink? Only invite them to non-smoking, non-drinking events.
You can’t singlehandedly stop our government from being a junkie to addiction studies. But you can do what you are able to prevent a few more costly wrecks.
Want more ways to help someone quit their addictions?