Treat Addiction - Don't Jail It -This Is Sad & Way Too Common

420 Warrior

Well-Known Member
TREAT ADDICTION, DON'T JAIL IT

Dear editor,

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Addiction is an obsessive compulsive behavior that interferes with everyday life. For an addict to change they must change their people, places and things. Government has become so focused on the war on drugs and forgotten about the ongoing battle of addiction. Probation is not designed to help. We are just another number; another lost cause in the eyes of the state.

Addiction affects everyone whether it is addiction to God or drugs, coffee or exercise, over or under eating. Addiction is an everyday battle. A successful recovering addict must change their people, places and things. Being incarcerated I am forced to form relationships with other addicts, in a place that makes me feel numb, and treated like an object. I am a number, no longer a person with a name.

Beginning early in adolescence, I started searching for a way to escape the guilt and shame caused by years of abuse. As soon as I took my first drug, I knew I had found the answer I had been looking for, or so I thought. Locking me away like an animal does not teach me to be clean. I cannot learn new coping skills. If the battle of addiction can be won, then the war on drugs can be conquered. I am an addict with a disease. Like someone with cancer, I must be treated. Treat the disease before it kills.

Probation punishes addicts by putting them in jail. We are numbered and sentenced the same. The same people keep coming back, so obviously something needs to change. I cannot vote to make a change because my voting rights have been stripped away. Probation doesn't help probationers find a job or try to keep them sober. I am a smart and beautiful young woman wasting away in the Walker County jail.

My children, ages four and six, are quickly learning to numb the pain of their mother being gone. Teaching them to ignore their "problem" rather then work through them. I am not a "problem." I am a person. Every day I pile on more shame and regret for the time spent away from my family. I feel hopeless and unworthy. Defeated before I begin. Who will stand up to make a change? When will someone speak for women and their families caught in addiction? I want to be the person I know I can be. I want to be proud of the woman in the mirror. All I want for Christmas is to hold my children. I want to hold my head high. Who will stand up for me?

Lacey Gifford, inmate at the Walker County jail
 
This is precisely why we must fight guys, people like this sit in prison rotting needlessly and their kids just go on suffering needlessly and our government just needlessly goes on thinking this is the answer to the drug question.

I'm sure this woman made some bad choices in her life but was rotting away in prison and leaving her kids missing their mom really the answer? This is certainly a strong case of the punishment being far worse than the crime and this is just one of tens of thousands of cases like this. This needs to stop being the go to answer for our citizens who clearly just need help and guidance in their lives.

I just don't get how our government officials can sleep at night knowing that they are treating people this way, people who's only crime was hurting themselves and that's only if she was using deadly drugs in which she didn't specify. Just think about all the people who are in the same boat as her who are there for Cannabis use only and were hurting no one including themselves.

Prison is not the answer, compassion and guidance is the only true moral answer in these cases. Our government is not to far off from treating drug users the way the Nazi's treated the Jews in Europe in the 30's and 40's, just without the wholesale murder aspect, but the herding people together and only seeing them as just a number part is exactly the same. Very sad indeed, this could be your mother or sister or a good friend and you would have to sit there and watch those kids spend their adolescent years being sad all the time because their mom can't spend Christmas or birthdays or first days of school or anything special with their mom and it has to just be heartbreaking for them, they probably spend endless nights crying themselves to sleep?

Meanwhile, our government officials are living large and getting richer by the minuet and not even giving these people a second thought and that's the part that pisses me off to no end and why I dedicate so much of my time fighting against drug laws and the establishment.

Please join me guys, make a stand with me and get involved and stay involved!!! They really do need our help. :thanks:
 
I agree with you completely that joining anyone for an illness is crazy. All drugs not just MJ need to be decriminalized.

Sound extreme? I do not think it is as extreme as locking an individual up and destroying their life over a personal choice no matter how bad of a choice I think they made. Some may say, who will pay for all this treatments these druggies will get instead of locking them up. My answer to them is this, you will be paying for the prison, or you can pay for them to get treatment, which would you rather have in your community, a reformed drug user or a ex-con who is still a drug user? Either way you will be paying for it.
 
Back
Top Bottom