What we're doing is simply a holding action. We've arrested more people than the prosecutors can prosecute, than the judges can convict, than the jails can hold. Until there's a demand reduction—and that means education and treatment—you're not going to see any change.
—Captain Harvey Ferguson, former chief of narcotics enforcement, Seattle, Washington
Though not all experts agree on a single definition of drug addiction, the 2000 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV Text Revision, or DSM-IV-TR (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2000), is the most widely used reference for diagnosing and treating mental illness and substance-related disorders. In the current DSM, the nation's psychiatrists draw a distin…
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has been collecting data on substance-abuse facilities since 1976. The program has had various names throughout its history; it was called the Uniform Facility Data Set (UFDS) survey until 2000, when the name was changed to the National Survey of Substance Abuse Tr…
TEDS data from 1992 to 2002 on admissions by sex, race/ethnicity, and age are presented in Table 8.3 and Table 8.1. Males represented the majority of those admitted for drug/alcohol treatment, although the proportion of men dropped slightly between 1992 and 2002 (from 71.5 to 69.9%) and that of women increased (from 28.1 to 30.1%). These results in 2002 and data from SAMHSA's household surv…
The treatment that a recovering drug addict receives depends on the types of drugs to which they are addicted. Regardless of the substance they are addicted to most treatment programs involve some form of rehabilitation ("rehab"). For many types of addiction rehab is the only form of treatment that is needed. However those who are addicted to opiates typically must undergo a period o…
Data on admissions by the primary substance of abuse provided by TEDS for 2003 are shown in Table 8.4. From a low of 1.522 million reported by TEDS in 1997, admissions grew to 1.74 million in 2003. Since 1992, the compounded annual increase was less than 1% a year, but much more dramatic increases were posted by admissions caused by different types of substances. In 2003 alcohol abuse (either alon…
The first major study of drug-treatment effectiveness was the Drug Abuse Reporting Program (DARP), which studied more than forty-four thousand clients in more than fifty treatment centers from 1969 to 1973. Program staff then studied a smaller group of these clients six and twelve years after their treatment. A second important study was the Treatment Outcome Prospective Study (TOPS) taken during …
The federal government expends substantial sums yearly obtaining data on how many people use drugs, how many are admitted to treatment facilities, how many treatment centers exist, how many hectares of opium poppy or coca bushes are eradicated, how many persons are arrested on drug charges, and on obtaining other similar measurements of progress. Current data on expenditures on treatment or the co…
A study conducted by the RAND corporation in 1994 concluded that treatment was the most effective program available for reducing cocaine consumption (Peter Rydell and Susan Everingham, Controlling Cocaine: Supply Versus Demand Programs (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1994, http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR331/). The authors studied various drug-control strategies—treatment, domestic enforcem…
God grant me the SERENITY to accept the things I cannot change, the COURAGE to change the things I can, and the WISDOM to know the difference. —Invocation used in most Twelve Step programs Many organizations provide assistance for addicts, their families, and friends. Most of the self-help groups are based on the Twelve Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). While AA is a support group …
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