This Week in the Mercury
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
News / Portland Monthly Drug Budget
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 3:48 PM
Yesterday I was downtown at Central City Concern talking to their executive director, Ed Blackburn, about heroin and acupuncture and the recession and all sorts of hot topics when he handed me a fat stack of papers comprising a financial report waaay more interesting that the front page of the Wall Street Journal: the economics of Portland drug addicts.
The report is a 2008 P.S.U. study (get yours here) investigating the links between substance abuse and criminal behavior. It's always tough to get statistics about the lives and habits of serious drug users ("finding heroin" is slightly higher on their to-do list than "filling out the U.S. Census and mailing it in a timely manner") and researchers dug up some interesting data by interviewing 87 recovering addicts who'd completed Central City Concern's rehab program.
So what does it cost to keep up a daily heroin, meth or crack habit in the Rose City? An average $206 a day! That's $6180 a month, adding up to $6.5 million a year for the 87 addicts... assuming they last the year at that rate.
"Jesus Christ!" I said, "How can they pay for all that?" Two days of crack costs would cover my entire month's rent. Oh, yeah, the "criminal behavior" part. Ninety-three percent of addicts had committed some sort of crime, mostly buying or selling drugs, stealing, threatening violence or prostitution. The recovering addicts estimated their average monthly income from crimes was $1978 or $2 million a year for the whole group.
So that's $2000 a month made from crimes, $6000 a month spent on drugs alone, I'm not sure how the hell they made up the $4000 difference, especially the 61% who were unemployed. Ideas? In the meantime, now is the relevant moment to compare the drug addict budget with Central City Concern's drug rehab budget. CCC's website states they spend $28 million annually to provide detox and rehab to 115,000 people. Blackburn says the drug and alcohol treatment programs have a 70-75% completion rate, so that's effectively $28 million in public funds to keep 80,500 people successfully off drugs.
People are often skeptical about funding rehab (in case you forgot: Measure 61) and in down economic times, social services are the first thing on the budgetary chopping block. But think about the economic impact: Doing the math on those 87 addicts surveyed, the public shells out $30,450 a year to keep them safe and in rehab. Or, we cut the funds and have those same 87 people on the streets stealing and prostituting $2 million a year from the public that they then hand over to crack dealers. If the world and Multnomah County plummet into recession, we should be willing to spend more money on social services.
1
The reality is that addicts cannot be forced into treatment (save for criminal convictions) - and if you line that up next to statistics for drug use relapse rates it'd be quite a chunk of change down the rathole.
2
D, forced is a silly word when there are dozens of addicts turned away from treatment everyday in Portland.
The math showing the success of drug treatment is not controversial - its conclusive. There is no evidence which shows imprisonment makes a better person upon release.
Because of the starvation scale of drug treatment its hard to argue we even provide the life-saving service.
The surprising and disappointing point is that this research hasn't been widely disseminated and assimilated by the public health bureaucracy.
4
Giving the junkie more choices of treatment facilities isn't the same choice as wanting to quit drugs or not.
5
In addition, people get turned away from places like Hooper and DePaul all of the time for lack of available resources. So what's better, having more resources available for those who will use them, or not increasing resources and dealing with the increase in criminal behavior that will invariably come with more people using on the street?
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