Incarceration is not drug treatment

The recent pronouncements and pontifications by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the Trump administration’s drug policies are disheartening (“Sessions’ foolish drug policy,” May 15). His statements also reveal a lack of understanding about addiction, now clinically referred to as “substance use disorder.”

Mr. Sessions’ policies ignore the medical findings of the past 15 years that substance use disorder is a bona fide disease. Opioids like heroin and carfentanil hjjack the user’s brain, creating cravings and abnormal behaviors that can be reversed with medicationassisted treatment, inpatient and outpatient services and family support activities.

Mr. Sessions calls for a return to the “Just say no” mantra of 1981. Multiple evaluations of this approach showed that it did not reduce drug use by youth. In some cases, it increased substance use, especially tobacco and alcohol.

A serious approach to reducing the opioid epidemic would focus on strengthening and expanding Medicaid to pay for inpatient and outpatient treatment and recovery programs. Lockup is not detox. Incarceration is not health care.