I am writing to advocate for passage of L.D. 967 to decriminalize possession and use of scheduled drugs. As a recovering alcoholic (over 50 years sober) and a counselor (LCPC and former LADC) who has worked with substance use disorders for decades, I am certain that this bill is a step in the right direction.

The War on Drugs was never the right strategy but was popular because it seemed simple and intuitively true. Drugs were bad and people who used them were bad and police action and jail were tools that would curtail the problem. Wrong! All that the war has done is cost millions of dollars and ruined many lives.

You can’t arrest your way out of a medical problem.

In the 1930s we decided to end prohibition of alcohol. In the 1970s we decided that alcohol intoxication was not a crime but a symptom of a problem that could be treated medically. Have we ended alcoholism? No, but I am here to tell you that without medical treatment from Hennepin County Alcoholism Treatment Center (Minneapolis, 1969) I would not be alive today to write this letter. Fortunately Minnesota recognized early on that alcoholics were not bad people or criminals, but sick. I got the help I needed without judgment or condemnation.

Science tells us there is no difference between addicts in the basic mechanism of addiction. Whether it is cocaine or methamphetamine or opiates or alcohol or nicotine, there is a final common pathway in the hypothalamus (the reward center of the brain) where addiction occurs via the brain chemical called dopamine. Medication, case management and learning skills to manage this chronic brain disorder can get and keep people with addiction issues in recovery.

Jail and threats of jail are no help at all.

Recently Gov. Janet Mills (a former prosecutor) and Attorney General Aaron Frey have spoken against decriminalization. They are appropriately worried that taking this different direction will decrease the power of judicial diversion by eliminating the fear of penalties. There should be penalties for harmful behaviors carried out while intoxicated (e.g. operating under influence) but there should no longer be penalties for merely possessing or using a substance.

Criminalizing people’s use of substances that causes no public harm is a hangover from a period in the early 20th century when it was thought that making substances (including alcohol) illegal would actually improve our common life. This is an experiment that not only has failed to work but has caused great harm in itself, crowding jails and prisons with people who do not belong there and putting black marks against their records that permanently work against their recovery.

We need to take a reasonable incremental step to keep us headed in a better direction by decriminalizing personal use of substances, an approach that has worked well in Portugal.

David Doreau is a resident of Waterville.

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