Use budget to treat substance use disorder - Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel

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Gov. Janet Mills’ biennial budget proposes nearly half a billion dollars to disproportionally incarcerate, police, and monitor people with substance-use disorders, while we continually fail to meaningfully invest in real solutions to the problem: detoxes, treatment, and recovery community organizations.

In just a few weeks, Sen. Chloe Maxmin’s bill L.D. 488: A Resolve to Expand Recovery Community Organizations Throughout Maine, will be before the Health and Human Services Committee seeking funding for seven new recovery community organizations, a proven recovery support strategy, in every county that does not have one at the price tag of a million dollars. I am all too aware of what the committee is going to say because it’s the same thing every year, and it goes something like: I know we really need this, but we just don’t have the money.

We do have the money. We just spend it in the wrong places.

We could take it from the $421 million allocated for the Department of Corrections, because we know incarceration does not work to treat substance use. We could also take it from the $13.6 million for the Drug Enforcement Agency, because even though we increased their budget by double in the last 10 years, there are more drugs on the streets than ever before.

We have to move from saying that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem to actually not doing it. That process begins and ends with which systems are funded. If we continue to fund the criminal justice system the way we always have, we will get the results we always have.

Instead, we need to reinvest some of this money into solutions that work, including seven new recovery community organizations across Maine. If we reimagine our budget and meaningfully fund new systems, we will get new results.

Courtney Allen

policy director

Maine Recovery Advocacy Project

Augusta

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