Thursday, September 18, 2003

States treating drug abuse as illness
MSNBC story - "States have taken sweeping action in recent years to roll back 'get-tough' approaches on drug policy, turning toward prevention, treatment and other alternatives to fight addiction, a new report from an advocacy group found. The survey of new laws between 1996 and 2001 found that states were adopting anti-drug approaches that treat addiction more like an illness than a crime, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that supports such an approach." See also the Drug Policy Alliance web site, their press release Drug Policy Alliance Follows Drug Policy Across the States, the home page of the State of the States report and the report itself, in Acrobat format. The site also features "one of the largest online collections of journal articles, reports, books, testimonies and fact sheets that focus on drugs and drug policy from economic, criminal justice, and public health perspectives." For specifics, see their online library.