Ashley Bobman

Addressing the Hopeless Appeal of Drugs

Hopeless people are often the ones who end up with hard core addictions, yet current
policies fail to address those plagued with a hopelessness that both leads to and encourages the
continuation of drug use. Through my understanding of this concept, gleaned from Courtwright
and Moore, I came to a conclusion regarding how to start addressing this hopeless drug appeal.
Poor workers earn miserable wages doing miserable work. These workers try to lessen
their despair with drugs. This results in the labor treadmill (Courtwright 136), a cycle of people
who work but never make any real economic progress because their surplus income goes to
buying drugs. What began as an attempt to lessen the melancholy of low paid minimum wage
jobs becomes an expensive habit. As Courtwright said, howsoever poor a man may be, he does
not leave the use of tobacco (138). Successfully disentangling minimum wage jobs from heavy
drug use requires some attempt to remedy the hopelessness felt by those individuals stuck on this
treadmill. Initially, this seemed like a good place to attack American drug use. A shift from
regressive to progressive taxes on alcohol and tobacco could help people off the treadmill.
Imposing progressive taxes should prevent those low-income individuals from spending too
much of their paycheck on these habits. The hope would be that, with time, the money saved will
slowly allow these individuals to improve their standard of living and potentially move out of the
neighborhood and/or find a less dead-end job. However, the gaping holes of this approach,
brought to light through Moores discussion of hopelessness, quickly made it lose its appeal.
One issue with this proposal stands-out. It fails to address illicit drug use and the
hopelessness associated with these habits. Courtwright speaks to emotions in the context of legal
psychoactive substances, but this hopelessness is largely intertwined in the use and dealing of

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illegal drugs as well. Keeping up any habit is costly. With illegal drugs, the potential for
incarceration contributes to the revolving door (Moore 1) that leaves people both using and
dealing trapped in low income jobs. The hopelessness of knowing you can never move up in the
world relates to why people go back to dealing as well. After 10 years in prison for drugs, no one
wants to hire you (Moore 2). You end up with poor paying jobs at places like Walmart where you
receive no respect, so why not return to dealing drugs? At least drug dealers have some sort of
status and respect and make more money than a minimum wage job and their fatalistic attitude
prevents these individuals from fearing the risks. Despite the realization that they will probably
either get shot on the street or end up back in jail, returning to a life of drug dealing still feels like
the best option (Moore 3). No one wants to hire a felon so those dealing remain stuck in the poor
neighborhood, they can never work up to the middle class and thus even with job training, their
fundamental socioeconomic condition is unchanged, and they cannot find any respect outside of
dealing. Regardless of whether the individual incarcerated uses, deals, or both, the felony charge
prevents them from ever getting an above minimum-wage, non-menial job.
Arresting and imprisoning drug users does little, if anything, to reduce consumption, and
may cause more harm to the individual and society than the drug itself (Hakim 527). Locking
people up for using and selling drugs puts a greater financial burden on society than it does
reduce the use of drugs and the burden of the users on society. This led me to consider the
decriminalization of all drugs in a manner that would incorporate both enforcement and
treatment as a solution.
Rather than incarcerate people for minor drug possession, I propose that first offenders be
fined and second offenders be required not only to pay an even greater fine but also to enter a
mandated treatment program, effectively merging enforcement with treatment. For those who

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cannot afford the first offense fine, a treatment program would replace this; however, secondtimers would not be exempt from the fine. The amount of the fine and length of the programs
would vary based on the addictive-nature of the involved drug and the subsequent burden of the
users of a specific drug on society. Existing funds dedicated to incarceration would be diverted to
help pay for these programs. Additionally, money from fines would feed back into the system by
assisting with, but likely covering very little of, program costs. My thought was that this will
hopefully reduce incarcerations, which are not effective for many users, and allow the
experimenters and social-recreational users to both avoid a criminal charge and avoid jail time
for a minor offense.
However, further research demonstrated many flaws with my approach. For example,
involuntary entrance into treatments tends to have low rates of retention once no longer required
to attend program, which can seriously diminish the impact of the treatment (Farabee et al.,
1999). Farabee et al. (1999) study of prison-based treatment programs identified six common
implementation issues for developing programs (a) client identification and referral, (b)
recruitment and training of treatment staff, (c) redeployment of correctional staff, (d)
overreliance on institutional versus therapeutic sanctions, (e) aftercare, and (f) coercion, many
of which would likely remain concerns in the aforementioned suggestion. Another study
evaluating 12-step programs also found that major obstacles to participation [are] centered on
motivation and readiness for change and on perceived need for help (Laudet, 2003).
Additionally, current programs tend to focus on people at the experimentation and socialrecreational level (Drug Policy Alliance), which ultimately wastes resources on those who need
them least. For those heavy users who enter the system, they do not significantly reduce chances
of incarceration down the road (Drug Policy Alliance).

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Beyond the aforementioned gaps in this solution lies the difficulty of getting people on
board with this policy change. The users with the greatest need for help tend to receive the least
sympathy. Rather than attempt to generate sympathy, I propose a different argument to increase
support for this change. Why should those outside of the hopeless group even care about these
low-income individuals? Well those who are hopeless tend to be more likely to turn to violence
and crime, which may not be limited to the neighborhood in which the hopeless resides.
Regardless of motive, whether psycho-pharmacologically, systemically or economiccompulsively driven, all violence has consequences; however, for those hopeless, they do not
fear those consequences and thus are much more willing to engage in these harmful and often
criminal behaviors. Thus by addressing the hopelessness, much of the violence that is associated
with drugs could be prevented. This includes violence from drug use itself, violence to obtain the
monetary means to purchase drugs, and violence that stems from the hopeless marginalized users
with low self-control who only have their respect left and thus initiate interactions when
disrespected. Reducing the overall occurrence of violence has the ability to improve the lives of
everyone both from a standpoint of reducing fear of crime and monetarily less money would
need to be poured into preventing drug-related crimes and that money could be diverted
elsewhere.
While similar changes may have been proposed in the past, a focus on these previously
mentioned flaws seem to overshadow the numerous benefits and prevents implementation of
change. As with any change to the PET triangle, this decriminalization that replaces jail-time
with treatment-time and fines does not and cannot cover all of the affected populations.
However, it seems to address many of the important yet ignored aspects contributing to the high
level of drug use in American society. Not only does this solution help remedy the

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aforementioned cycle of drugs and hopelessness, but it also simultaneously reduces incarceration
and requires programs with the potential to help at least some users change their behaviors.
Additionally, it has the potential to economically benefit society as a whole and reduce some
forms of violence.

Works Cited:
Courtwright, D. (2001). Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World.
Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press.
Farabee, D., Prendergast, M., Cartier, J., Wexler, H., Knight, K., & Anglin, M.D. (June 1999).
Barriers to Implementing Effective Correctional Drug Treatment Programs. The Prison
Journal, 79, 150-162, doi:10.1177/0032885599079002002
http://tpj.sagepub.com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/content/79/2/150.full.pdf+html
Laudet, A.B. (2003). Attitudes and beliefs about 12-step groups among
addiction treatment
clients and clinicians: toward identifying obstacles to participation.
Subst Use Misuse, 38(14), 20172047.
http://www.tandfonline.com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/doi/pdf/10.1081/JA-120025124
Moore, S. Trying to Break Cycle of Prison at Street Level. The New York Times, November
23, 2007.