Drugs. The hometown battle

 

President Donald Trump and New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, are having conversations about dealing with America’s drug problem.

Both men bring something to the table. Trump, whose late brother, Fred, was an alcoholic, doesn’t drink, and Christi, a lawyer, was a prosecutor of drug dealers and developed a passion for putting them out of business. So both men know something about the subject of addiction.

Recent history tells us that national “Wars on Drugs” initiatives have not been successful, and suggests that the two men should, instead, develop the means to help individual communities take care of their drug problems.

President Trump, a world class entrepreneur, is likely to favor helping communities help themselves, and, revive our flagging impulse toward generosity, faith and self reliance.

“We have whole segments of our country that have opted out of the civic process. And when good people walk away from community involvement, that’s when the wackos really do take over,” was a comment from Jane Callahan, project director of the “Fighting Back” partnership in Vallejo California twenty years ago.

“At Fighting Back, we’re helping people see that its worth their while to get in there and try. We’ve found that when people believe they can make a difference, that’s when they usually do.”

So what was Fighting Back all about?

 

The Fighting Back project

In 1995, Little Rock, Arkansas, like Vallejo, was one of 15 communities in the nation to receive $3 million in grant money from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Each community was charged with developing a citywide program addressing the problem of gangs. The Foundation called the program “Fighting Back.”

The program produced some interesting insights and some successes in reducing the influence of gangs. What it did not do was reduce drug abuse, perhaps indicating the lack of a spiritual component in the program. Still, the initiative provided experience and insights that are helpful in evaluating new strategies for communities.

Little Rock’s successful grant proposal included this cogent observation about what communities were up against, “the disease of substance abuse affects an entire city much the same as the disease affects its individual residents. Denial prevents its identification, and an unwillingness to deal with the problem and blaming others prevent recovery.

The proposal also said that “In order for the city of Little Rock to have power against the problem, initiatives must be created which break the denial, reduce the fear, restore faith in the ability to change and in the ability of public systems to respond.”

Vanderbilt University psychiatrist, Dr. Anderson (Andy) Spickard, Jr., who was in charge of the national Fighting Back project, expressed misgivings about the ability of public systems to respond and warned at the outset that Fighting Back was not intended to be a social or economic development program. It was a program, he said, to reduce the use and abuse of illegal drugs and alcohol.

“Somehow,” Spickard emphasized, “we must keep focused on substance abuse. Otherwise Fighting Back is in danger of getting lost in a sea of social programs which do not have the primary intent of reducing demand.”

Ultimately, a final report stated, there were some good things ascribed to the program but no evidence that there was any impact on substance abuse which was the principal target.

The challenge now is for individual communities to find out what does work and that is the subject of our proposal for organizing the Little Rock Roundtable outlined below.

Mobilizing Community resources needed for recovery.

The Little Rock/North Little Rock metro area with a population of about 700,000 has all of the basic resources needed to address community addiction problems. The list includes:

1. Hospitals able to treat mental health problems (i.e. anxiety, depression, PTSD).
2. “Treatment” facilities focusing on addictions and offering detox services.
3. Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12 Step programs like Narcotics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous.
4. Christian churches and other Christ-centered organizations (i.e. Salvation Army, Union Rescue Mission) offering addiction recovery programs.
5. Special programs focusing on teens, veterans and prison inmates, populations that have higher instances of drug abuse
6. Law enforcement, courts and prison systems.
7. Transitional housing to help those make the adjustment from treatment to the demands of the real world.
8. Job generating non-profits like Good Will and Easter Seals.

Momentum is growing in the fight against substance abuse. Churches are increasingly confronting addictions of all kinds and offering programs of recovery. Universities are doing potentially groundbreaking research. Hospitals and other caregivers are developing new treatments.

It is in the interest of businesses and other organizations to proactively confront the problem. When substance abuse is reduced, work forces become more productive, and costs associated with health care, crime, accidents and incarceration go down.

Our community has experience with a successful grass roots campaign in this field. Little Rock’s “Fighting Back” initiative in the nineties successfully slowed the drug-fueled gang menace and other threats of that time, and many of its projects are operating today.

ODAT’s role

One of the most effective weapons against substance abuse is information. Informing citizens about the scope and consequences of substance abuse and about where to get help, how other people recover and the availability of both secular and spiritual resources is a priority.

An effective public awareness initiative is a key. A successful communications campaign creates a climate in which communities can develop the political will to act boldly over a long period of time. Informed citizens face problems with greater courage.

Building on a solid culture of recovery

         In 1980, I landed in Little Rock with less than a year of sobriety and wondering if I would ever make it. I was fortunate. Little Rock has a rich tradition of dealing with alcoholism and the abuse of other drugs. The city was among the earliest adherents of Alcoholics Anonymous and had also attracted budding evangelical and entrepreneurial churches, including Fellowship Bible Church, which I joined in 1980 as a new Christian.

         The Little Rock approach plan

In 1940, five years after the birth of AA in Akron, Ohio, and only a year after the publication of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, a group of recovering alcoholics in Little Rock developed a program of recovery based on AA’s 12 Steps. They called it “the Little Rock approach plan.” My sponsor prescribed an updated version of it for me 35 years ago.

So far so good.