Drug addiction discriminates against no one. Drug addiction is often close to home. “Even people with no baseline genetic risk can become addicts if their environment is stressful.” Drug addiction is a complex problem that is often misunderstood and difficult to address due to the high illicit drug use. According to the 2012 Lancet Series on addiction it “estimates 200 million people world wide use illicit drugs each year.” With so many individuals using drugs, I believe drug addicts should not be sent to prison for punishment but instead a hospital to receive extensive treatment for their disorder.
When individuals are sent to prison proper treatment can’t be obtained; drug abuse goes beyond physical and needs to be handled with proper treatment in a hospital. According to The Sage Journal “Scholars argued that incarceration was ineffective for drug-dependent offenders because it did not address the specific needs of these offenders, namely, the social and psychological correlates of drug addiction.” (Warren.Vol.26).
In a hospital setting drug addicts can receive treatment such as detoxing, counseling and psychological
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However, drug abuse often stems from psychological factors such as stress, childhood trauma, abandonment issues and several others. Another opposing view is that prison provides stability for drug addicts but prison conforms addicts to the lifestyle of a prisoner. Prisoners are given no freewill and in the real world there will always be choices to be made.
In conclusion, research has proven that treatment outside prison has been effective “Research emerged indicating that substance abuse treatment was in fact effective at reducing drug use and drug-related crimes”. “In a sample of 245 program participants and 137 comparison offenders, the average number of rearrests for treatment participants was substantially lower than that of comparison