Drug and Alcohol Rehabs Blog

More Funding for Rehabilitation and Prevention

February 8, 2010 on 6:42 pm | In Uncategorized | No Comments

On February 1, 2010 the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) issued its proposed budget for 2011 addiction treatment and prevention programs, citing a 13 percent increase in spending for prevention and education as well as an increase of nearly 4 percent for drug treatment services.

While the proposed increases are welcome, many in the drug rehab field feel that too much money is spent on the supply reduction and not enough on the demand reduction, as there is still a very wide gap of those who need drug rehab centers vs. those who actually get some type of help.

In fact, roughly 22 million people report past-month use of illicit drugs yet only about 2 million people receive some type of addiction treatment.

Given the amount of wasteful spending and bureaucratic tendencies, it is doubtful that governmental interdiction will make any substantial impact in the near future on the problem. Just like with rehabilitation programs who don’t get results, they have to continually justify their own existence by showing how bad the problem really is, when if they would just get results then they would have all the resources they needed to handle the problem.