There has been a significant upward trend in funding for nonprofit companies in the U.S. according to the Harvard Business Review. Non-profits, the Business Review says, have become America's biggest employer. There are almost one million non-profit organizations in the social sector, and donors, polls reveal, want to elevate the game beyond simply funding homeless shelters and food pantries. They want to end homelessness, hunger and drug addiction. Too ambitious? Perhaps, but … [Read more...]

“ Substance abuse,” Little Rock's Frankie Sarver once said, “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 prevents recovery.” Frankie, wife of the late Bob Sarver, Arkansas Commissioner of Correction during the Winthrop Rockefeller administration, stated further nearly 30 years ago, that “people and communities—whose behaviors are partly defined by fear, … [Read more...]

On a stormy October night in 1999, an American Airlines passenger jet was on approach at Little Rock airport, and it was bad. “Go around max thrust nine,” the captain, Ron Walker, first instructed his co-captain. For Ron, flying this leg of the flight, it had been a long day, and this go-around maneuver is difficult, even in good weather with both pilots doing their jobs. The thunderstorm was four miles off the approach end of runway 4 right, and the controller had turned the plane … [Read more...]

Last month, Congress sent a sweeping legislative package aimed at curbing the opioid epidemic to President Trump for approval. “The Support for Patients and Communities Act,” sped through Congress, winning approval by a margin of 393 to 8 in the House and 98 to 1 in the Senate. The avalanche of overdose deaths reached more than 72,000 in 2017. More than two thirds of the deaths were due to opioids, including prescription pain pills, heroin, and fentanyl. Hazelden Betty Ford, a … [Read more...]

“My son took his life on his 34th birthday rather than go back to prison for the third time.” Can there be sadder words than these from a mother? Pam Christian, the mother, and I (David Palmer) have exchanged several e-mails about her son’s death and now her grandson’s addiction and treatment experience. Here is her account: “This (her son’s death) came after an addiction to drugs that began when he was in his mid teens. At the time of his death, he had a son who had just turned 11. … [Read more...]