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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

A new Drug Policy Alliance report, "A Four-Pillars Approach to Methamphetamine: Policies for Effective Drug Prevention, Treatment, Policing and Harm Reduction," evaluates current state and federal methamphetamine policies and recommends major reforms. The report, which was covered in several newspapers and featured at a forum on Capitol Hill for congressional staffers, is the first in the U.S. to lay out a "four pillars" approach to addressing methamphetamine abuse.

The report holds that the pillars of a successful methamphetamine strategy are prevention, treatment, policing and harm reduction. This four pillars approach is already in use in cities around the world, most notably Vancouver, and has resulted in a dramatic reduction in the number of users consuming drugs on the street, a significant drop in overdose deaths, and a reduction in the infection rates for HIV/AIDS and hepatitis.

The report highlights successful efforts taking place on the state level to move methamphetamine policy in the right direction.

California's Proposition 36, the landmark treatment-instead-of-incarceration initiative sponsored by a DPA affiliate and approved by California voters, has become a tremendously effective response to methamphetamine--even though the program is not methamphetamine-specific. More than half the people who enter treatment through Prop. 36 identify methamphetamine as their primary illegal drug. The program has graduated more than 84,000 people since its implementation in 2001, and has saved California taxpayers more than $1.5 billion.

New Mexico has a strategy that is specific to methamphetamine, and is the only state that actually uses the four pillars approach. This strategy, which arose from a working group co-chaired by the governor's drug czar and DPA New Mexico, is becoming a model for bringing together key stakeholders, fostering interagency collaboration, and implementing a coordinated methamphetamine strategy.  In addition, DPA New Mexico is working with state agencies and the private sector to implement a youth methamphetamine education program funded by federal grant money that will serve as an alternative to the failed scare tactics of D.A.R.E., the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, and the Montana Meth Project.

In contrast to these and other sensible state strategies, the report finds methamphetamine policy at the federal level to be seriously lacking. "The U.S. government has taken a punitive, supply-side approach to methamphetamine for more than 40 years, and at every step of the way this approach has enriched organized crime, made street methamphetamine more potent, and worsened meth-related problems," said Bill Piper, DPA's director of national affairs and author of the new report. "It's time for a demand-side approach that prioritizes treatment, public health and family unity."

The report makes a series of recommendations for each pillar of the four pillars strategy.

Prevention recommendations include eliminating ineffective programs based on scare tactics; increasing funding for after school programs; supporting reality-based drug education in schools; and increasing employment and educational opportunities.

Recommendations for the treatment pillar include diverting people convicted of simple methamphetamine possession to treatment; making treatment available to all people who need it as often as they need it; increasing funding for family treatment programs; and protecting parents who seek drug treatment from having their children taken away.

Recommendations for policing include reprioritizing federal methamphetamine law enforcement resources towards drug cartels and leaving low- and mid-level offenders to the states; shifting local and state drug law enforcement officers from targeting nonviolent offenders to targeting offenders who commit crimes against people or property; and setting clear statutory goals for the disruption of major methamphetamine operations and requiring agencies to report on their success at meeting those goals.

The harm reduction pillar includes such recommendations as making sterile syringes more available; repealing the federal ban on using HIV/AIDS prevention money on syringe exchange; and increasing public funding to clean up the sites of methamphetamine labs.

"Our country cannot incarcerate its way out of the methamphetamine problem," said Piper. "Punitive policies have been exhaustively tried and they have failed, not just with methamphetamine, but also with cocaine, heroin, marijuana and numerous other drugs including alcohol during Prohibition. The federal government should follow the lead of California, New Mexico and Utah and emphasize treatment over incarceration."

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