{"id":3415,"date":"2022-11-29T17:49:27","date_gmt":"2022-11-29T06:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/to-americas-permissive-addiction-fix-critics-just-say-no\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T12:45:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T01:45:31","slug":"to-americas-permissive-addiction-fix-critics-just-say-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/to-americas-permissive-addiction-fix-critics-just-say-no\/","title":{"rendered":"To America’s Permissive Addiction ‘Fix,’ Critics Just Say No"},"content":{"rendered":"

After nine years as a homeless drug addict in Los Angeles, Jared Klickstein finally checked himself into a drug treatment center. Unlike the program he had gone to six years before, which had hot tubs, acupuncture, and trips to the beach, this one, in North Hollywood, was deadly serious about personal responsibility. Clients kept a strict schedule. They did chores. They scrubbed toilets. \u201cNo hot tubs,\u201d Klickstein said.
Most important, they couldn\u2019t use drugs. \u201cIf you use, they kick you out,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s consequences.\u201d
It took him two attempts, but Klickstein, now 33, finally got clean. Four and a half years later, he\u2019s independent, employed, and emotionally stable. \u201cI was a person that you would see on one of these videos, screaming with blood and shit all over them,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd now I\u2019m not.\u201d
Klickstein attributes his success to the North Hollywood program\u2019s emphasis on sobriety and accountability. \u201cWithout sobriety, there is no mental or emotional stability for me and most other drug addicts, meaning homelessness was inevitable,\u201d he said. \u201cHalf measures and coddling do not work. Period.\u201d
But tough-love centers like the one that turned Klickstein\u2019s life around are becoming harder to come by. The idea that you have to quit drugs to recover from addiction has become old-fashioned, and treatment centers that insist on abstinence are disappearing. In California, changes in state law have made it virtually impossible for any program that accepts public funds to push clients to quit using.
… and before he got himself cleaned up. \u201cHalf measures and coddling do not work,” Klickstein says. “Period.\u201d
\u201cYou cannot intervene or even speak to someone regarding their alcohol and drug use,\u201d said Reverend Andy Bales, who has worked in drug recovery in Los Angeles for decades. As a result, most homeless services and housing providers in the city allow, in his words, \u201ca free flow of alcohol and hard drugs.\u201d This permissive approach, Bales believes, is why California has more people living on the street than any other state in the country.
The repudiation of abstinence-based treatment in California and many other states represents the broad embrace of an approach called \u201charm reduction.\u201d Instead of seeing addiction as a serious illness whose treatment ultimately requires addicts to stop using drugs, it casts addiction as a risky health condition to be managed, and insists that different people benefit from different management strategies, not all of which require abstinence.
But as the addiction crisis has deepened across the country, with the highly toxic and addictive opioid fentanyl killing addicts at record rates<\/a>, homelessness exploding in California<\/a> and throughout<\/a> the West Coast<\/a>, and drug cartels operating in the open<\/a> in cities like San Francisco, the ascendance of a particularly dogmatic form of harm reduction may be exacerbating the crisis instead of mitigating it. By normalizing drug use, eschewing intervention, and shutting down abstinence-based treatment programs, critics of this radical harm reduction philosophy believe it\u2019s keeping people trapped in addiction.
\u201cIt\u2019s just going to end up with more death,\u201d said Klickstein.<\/span><\/p>\n


For complete story<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n


Also see
The inevitable outcome of ever permissive drug policy interpretations<\/b><\/a> and<\/b>
The Disastrous Californian Cannabis Legalization Experiment \u2013 More than promises \u2018Up in Smoke\u2019!<\/b><\/a>
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After nine years as a homeless drug addict in Los Angeles, Jared Klickstein finally checked himself into a drug treatment center. Unlike the program he had gone to six years before, which had hot tubs, acupuncture, and trips to the beach, this one, in North Hollywood, was deadly serious about personal responsibility. Clients kept a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-isabella-list-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}