Lawmakers today are scheduled to hear a request for a $3 million bond for drug-abuse treatment that would save lives, reduce prison costs by several times the amount of the bond, reduce crime and add to the drug-treatment options available in Maine. The bond is a smart and overdue investment for Maine and one the Legislature should support.

Sponsored by Rep. Ted Koffman, LD 669 would authorize the funding to “provide infrastructure for expanded treatment capacity for alcoholism and addiction in a Therapeutic Community model.” That model is being promoted by The Maine Lighthouse Corp., which wants to use part of the Loring Commerce Centre in Limestone for residential treatment and other locations in the state for in-take and re-entry facilities. The Therapeutic Community model is an intense, highly structured, long-term method of helping those who have tried and failed to kick their addictions through every other means.

Some members of the Legislature may oppose spending bond money on such a project; others may argue that Maine already has sufficient facilities to treat the addicted.

They have only to look at the number of Maine residents who die each year from drug overdoses – nearly 200 in the last two years – and consider the money the state spends on crowded jails and prisons to know that the current services, while they may be excellent, are not sufficient. As for spending bond money, if Maine’s standard for bonding is its purchases of scenic views it can certainly put up money to treat drug addiction.

Two years ago, a joint study from the Maine Center for Public Health, Maine Public Health Association and Maine Office of Substance Abuse looked at the rising problem of drug abuse in Maine and proposed various options for solving it; among them was increasing access to treatment, including long-term care. Currently, demand for long-term treatment exceeds capacity and, with the low price of heroin, likely will for a long time.

Attacking drug and alcohol abuse requires nothing less than shifting state government’s perspective of undervaluing treatment while feeling forced to build more prisons, where so many of those addicted end up. A Therapeutic Community at Loring should be only one of several investments to reduce drug and alcohol addiction in Maine, which loses hundreds of millions annually to these and the crime related to them.

The bond money in LD 669 is a small push toward a healthier way of treating addiction.