Our Views

I read an article today in the New York Times about a proposed smoking ban in New York outpatient alcohol and drug treatment centers. That’s a story in itself of course, but other things about the article also caught my attention. First, the article said there are 1100 treatment centers in New York, two thirds of which are outpatient facilities. The outpatient treatment model does not have a high success rate – the best rehab facilities are long-term inpatient models. Yet the state’s Department of Health is going to spend $8 million on getting alcoholics and drug addicts to quit smoking instead of investing it creating more successful drug detox and rehab programs.

Don’t get me wrong, I know smoking is dangerous and I agree that people should quit. But to dilute the already strained financial and personnel resources, personnel who are trained in handling alcoholics and drug addicts, is not going to improve the addiction epidemic.
 
Here’s another problem with the smoking ban - $4 million of that $8 million is going to be spent on nicotine replacement devices – including drugs. That means that drug and alcohol detox and rehab centers that already use ‘drug replacement therapy’ as a way of handling addiction – in other words, put the person on methadone instead of heroin, and usually park them there for years – may now be sending someone off to start their new ‘drug-free’ life on two replacement drugs, one for the alcohol or drug addiction they came into treatment to handle, and the other for smoking.

Resolving the problem of alcohol and drug addiction is already an overwhelming problem in the U.S. – there aren’t enough treatment centers, and most of them have pretty low success rates. Why not put those resources into creating more successful alcohol and drug detox and rehab programs so we can get better handle on that problem?

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