Imagine your 14-year-old daughter comes home from her friend’s house one weekend night and is drunk. Naturally, you handle the situation with the necessary limit setting and appropriate consequences. The next weekend, she is late for curfew and after some talking admits she has tried marijuana. You feel your daughter should get some substance abuse counseling and tell her so, she digs in her adolescent heels and refuses to go.

Currently, under Maine state law, no parent can make their child go to substance abuse treatment services. Parents can make their kids go to the doctor if they are sick with the flu, any other physical ailment or are suffering from a mental illness, but there is not a similar provision for substance abuse.

There is a bill up for a vote in this legislative session that would allow parents to involuntarily commit their children to substance abuse treatment programs. LD 611, titled An Act to Obtain Substance Abuse Services for Minors, sponsored by Sen. Margaret Rotundo, seeks to give parents more rights in finding services which they feel their children need.

Although on the surface this looks like a good idea, let’s think for a moment how well any coercive approach works with children. How many times have we heard that even adults who have substance abuse issues “need to hit rock bottom” before they “invest” in the treatment in order for it to work? How can coercive treatment help an adolescent, or a child to make better choices about alcohol and drug use?

Sen. Rotundo admitted to the involuntary nature of the bill when she introduced it at the bill’s public hearing on April 1. She admitted to the uncertainty of how well coercive treatment works in the long term. She offered that her constituent whose story she represented in putting this bill forth wanted another avenue for treatment for her children, before they were involved in juvenile justice. Sen. Rotundo’s constituent feels that if she had been allowed to put her kids into treatment at an earlier point her children would not have had to go through the “rock bottom” stage.

Kim Johnson, director of the Maine Office of Substance Abuse, also spoke at the public hearing neither for nor against LD 611. She stated that the long-term outcomes for the criminal substance abusing population who undergo involuntary treatment are pretty good. Are we comparing children under 18 who abuse substances to criminals? That doesn’t seem valid. Johnson acknowledged in her testimony that substance abuse is difficult to diagnose in the child and adolescent population due to their developmental issues.

If this bill was passed, who decides who qualifies for involuntary treatment? Do the parents set the standard, or substance abuse counselors, or local doctors or the state? What happens if parents choose not to have their child put into treatment and someone else feels their child is abusing substances; can those parents then be reported for neglect? What about issues regarding involuntary commitment? How long would the treatment programs be allowed to detain a child; would it depend on age, or level of substance abuse or both? And naturally, who will pay for all of this when substance abuse treatment programs for adolescents are limited now, and underserve the most needy already adjudicated population?

Perhaps as a state we need to look for a more comprehensive fix than the Band-Aid offered by LD 611 of allowing parents to ship their kids off to a treatment program. Where can we put preventative money to stop kids from abusing substances and alcohol in the first place? The Maine Youth Drug and Alcohol Use Survey (MYDAUS) of 2002 reports that 80 percent of sixth-graders have not used alcohol, but by 12th grade that number turns around and 80 percent have used. The same survey reports that marijuana use rises from less than 5 percent in sixth grade to more than 50 percent by 12th grade. What is going on in our communities? Why are so many Maine teenagers and children choosing to drink and use drugs?

Let’s think proactively, not reactively.

Ellen Sharp, M.Ed. is resident director of Estabrooke Hall at the University of Maine.