Drug problem needs new solutions

We spend a lot of time at the Frontiersman thinking and writing about drugs.

Lately, we’ve been fixated on the efforts in Juneau to guide the implementation of a voter-approved initiative legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. We feel compelled to write about this because Mat-Su seems poised to play a significant role in the coming marijuana economy.

We’ve previously covered the rise of synthetic, so-called designer drugs and efforts to curb their use in Alaska in general and in Wasilla specifically.

Years ago, we put out an entire section of the newspaper containing stories on the sole topic of the rise of methamphetamine use and manufacturing in Mat-Su.

These days, methamphetamine use is still a problem but clandestine meth laboratories are a rarity. Equally problematic as the use of meth, though, is the use of heroin.

Drugs are a singularly frustrating topic to think and to write about. Despite stiff penalties for possessing them, their use continues unabated and those penalties swell our penal system to overflowing.

That our prisons have become our de facto drug treatment centers — and, in a lot of ways, our de facto mental institutions — is a problem not just in Alaska but in the nation as a whole.

We have frequently taken to this space to call for a different approach to combating drug use, one that is less punitive and more therapeutic, one based not on incarceration but on treatment.

With today’s story about the three-year anniversary of the overdose death of Alexi Bickers, we feel compelled to renew that call.

In the three years since her death, heroin has increased the number of lives it claims every year. It seems to be more accessible than ever. Police report seizing record amounts in the past two years, but still the death rate from heroin is more than 20 people every year - up from zero deaths as recently as 2006. There were just six heroin deaths in the eight-year period from 2000 to 2007 in Alaska.

This, while the number of police on the streets locking up users is greater than it was a decade ago. And the number of prison beds available to house chronic users has likewise increased. Goose Creek Correctional Center, the state’s largest prison, opened in 2013, and already has called for medics to assist prisoners who have overdosed on heroin, according to emergency ban scanner traffic.

We welcome the 911 Good Samaritan law passed in 2014 and the change in Alaska law that reclassifies marijuana and will free up law enforcement agencies to focus on heroin and other actually lethal drugs.

The one thing that doesn’t seem to have increased, though, is treatment options for people who want to kick the habit.

We have attended meetings where people have spent a lot of time talking about what to do with homeless teenagers, what to do about prisoners reentering society and what to do about homeless families.

We cannot in recent memory recall being invited to a meeting to talk about increasing the amount of treatment beds available for those addicted to controlled substances.

No one who dies of a drug overdose is expendable. Every drug addict — no matter how broken — is someone’s beloved child. All are worthy of our care and compassion.

It’s time we invest state tax dollars in treatment and recovery to help kids like Alexi Bickers get treatment, stay alive, and help us build a better Alaska.