Great Article, Andre! Thank you for getting this information out for people to see. I would like to make one correction. The 56% number is the graduation rate. Of those graduates 80-86% of them do not reoffend within 3 years of graduation. 75% of all participants who leave our program (whether through graduation, termination, or voluntary withdrawal) do not reoffend within 3 years of completing the program or their sentence!
Beyond Therapeutic Courts and the Sherrif's Behavioral Health Unit, this tax also supports mental health and substance use services in the jail and a full time Mental Health Professional working with the Juveniles in the Youth Detention Center and Juvenile Probation.
So much good is done with this very small tax! I hope the people of Cowlitz County will show the Commissioners that they do support funding to help those in our community that really need the help to get out of the destructive place they are in so they can move forward as strong, supportive, and self-sufficient members of our community! Most people suffering from addiction and mental health issues do not want to be living the life they are living and just need the help, support, and accountability to get past this time in their lives!
This tax is small enough to be invisible. Please Vote Yes on Advisory Vote Proposition 1!
Rather than the “Lock ‘em up!” attitude so many in our community espouse, “Help ‘em up!” is much more effective. Participants have the opportunity to work, pay rent and utilities, rebuild family relationships and get their lives back on track at great savings to the entire community.
Eugene, OR has had a social service intervention program for decades. They respond with a paramedic and social worker to situations that could be made worse with law enforcement. Citizens have become conditioned to recognize the best responders, police or CAHOOTS, saving the public even more.
You wrote many articles on my grandmother Anne Peters and my mother Dick and Judi Peters over the years in Abernathy Creek.
I decided to move into the larger cities from the rural area of Abernathy after college. I worked in the music and audio/visual world.
In doing so I met a number artist types as well as old high school friends that never seemed to launch into society and a “normal” career path.
I watched an addicted musician friend who David Bowie called to say he “wished he had made his record” and John Taylor from Duran Duran flew up regularly to rehearse in a damp wet basement to rehearse with him.
In the end I watched alcohol, then marijuana and later cocaine start in the 80s to a full-blown heroin addiction in the 90s to the early 2000s when he back to heroin after a period of sobriety and the prescription pills on the Oregon Health Plan.
By 2016 I saw him fall into the meth and then fentanyl world. Heroin was too expensive.
I saw him get housing first in a beautiful studio apartment in the Pearl district (the Sitka) on a mental health stipend paid by his which effectively created a drug den of 2-3 addicts in the studio of which poor elderly neighbor men and ladies that slipped through the cracks of our social safety net have to deal with “housing first” addicts. Awful. The disruptions, scams and chaos.
Addicts that sell $325 worth of groceries on their state issued ebt cards for $175 in parking lots and use the money for drugs and instead get food at the 3 best food banks when hungry.
The drug court can work in Cowlitz county. But another huge factor that attracts homeless is the social services. A junkie is afraid of being “dopesick”. The thing midsize cities like Longview-Kelso and even Chehalis-Centralia have about ten clinics for prescribing methadone and suboxone. Basically artificial heroin that they stay on for life if recovered but often simply used to bridge being dopesick as an active addict. It’s a cat and mouse game like my friend in Portland and the system is worked hard.
In my opinion we need field medical tent treatment offices for a state-run detox and then maybe a group living tent situation like we’d give our troops in the field.
Honestly how many families can afford to send a loved one to detox and do rehabs over and over with the rate of recidivism of fentanyl and meth combo and the exorbitant cost of treatment? In that highly addictive scenario trust me when I say you are in state if not caring like heroin and wide awake in that state for 36 hours committing property crime to get the next fix. In some cases we need involuntary commitment because that particular situation you have no capacity to make any other decision than getting more.
Low-cost field detox and then rehab in group text and then get a person in a state where they can be accountable and get incentives to get clean like through drug court to address mental health.
Housing first and field detox with perhaps involuntary commitment is the way to go in my opinion. Especially with active fentanyl/meth addicts. Then we can assess if we can even bring them back to be functional members of society if permanently damaged and mentally ill. Then probably state-run institutions with oversight.
Great Article, Andre! Thank you for getting this information out for people to see. I would like to make one correction. The 56% number is the graduation rate. Of those graduates 80-86% of them do not reoffend within 3 years of graduation. 75% of all participants who leave our program (whether through graduation, termination, or voluntary withdrawal) do not reoffend within 3 years of completing the program or their sentence!
Beyond Therapeutic Courts and the Sherrif's Behavioral Health Unit, this tax also supports mental health and substance use services in the jail and a full time Mental Health Professional working with the Juveniles in the Youth Detention Center and Juvenile Probation.
So much good is done with this very small tax! I hope the people of Cowlitz County will show the Commissioners that they do support funding to help those in our community that really need the help to get out of the destructive place they are in so they can move forward as strong, supportive, and self-sufficient members of our community! Most people suffering from addiction and mental health issues do not want to be living the life they are living and just need the help, support, and accountability to get past this time in their lives!
Please Vote Yes on Advisory Vote Proposition 1!
Hope we can pass levy to support this worthwhile project!
This tax is small enough to be invisible. Please Vote Yes on Advisory Vote Proposition 1!
Rather than the “Lock ‘em up!” attitude so many in our community espouse, “Help ‘em up!” is much more effective. Participants have the opportunity to work, pay rent and utilities, rebuild family relationships and get their lives back on track at great savings to the entire community.
Eugene, OR has had a social service intervention program for decades. They respond with a paramedic and social worker to situations that could be made worse with law enforcement. Citizens have become conditioned to recognize the best responders, police or CAHOOTS, saving the public even more.
Basic human decency and compassion seems to be a foreign concept to Dahl and Mortensen.
Drug and Mental Health Court are incredible programs. Please vote yes as this will help save so many lives.
I soooo agree!
Andre.
Good perspectives.
You wrote many articles on my grandmother Anne Peters and my mother Dick and Judi Peters over the years in Abernathy Creek.
I decided to move into the larger cities from the rural area of Abernathy after college. I worked in the music and audio/visual world.
In doing so I met a number artist types as well as old high school friends that never seemed to launch into society and a “normal” career path.
I watched an addicted musician friend who David Bowie called to say he “wished he had made his record” and John Taylor from Duran Duran flew up regularly to rehearse in a damp wet basement to rehearse with him.
In the end I watched alcohol, then marijuana and later cocaine start in the 80s to a full-blown heroin addiction in the 90s to the early 2000s when he back to heroin after a period of sobriety and the prescription pills on the Oregon Health Plan.
By 2016 I saw him fall into the meth and then fentanyl world. Heroin was too expensive.
I saw him get housing first in a beautiful studio apartment in the Pearl district (the Sitka) on a mental health stipend paid by his which effectively created a drug den of 2-3 addicts in the studio of which poor elderly neighbor men and ladies that slipped through the cracks of our social safety net have to deal with “housing first” addicts. Awful. The disruptions, scams and chaos.
Addicts that sell $325 worth of groceries on their state issued ebt cards for $175 in parking lots and use the money for drugs and instead get food at the 3 best food banks when hungry.
The drug court can work in Cowlitz county. But another huge factor that attracts homeless is the social services. A junkie is afraid of being “dopesick”. The thing midsize cities like Longview-Kelso and even Chehalis-Centralia have about ten clinics for prescribing methadone and suboxone. Basically artificial heroin that they stay on for life if recovered but often simply used to bridge being dopesick as an active addict. It’s a cat and mouse game like my friend in Portland and the system is worked hard.
In my opinion we need field medical tent treatment offices for a state-run detox and then maybe a group living tent situation like we’d give our troops in the field.
Honestly how many families can afford to send a loved one to detox and do rehabs over and over with the rate of recidivism of fentanyl and meth combo and the exorbitant cost of treatment? In that highly addictive scenario trust me when I say you are in state if not caring like heroin and wide awake in that state for 36 hours committing property crime to get the next fix. In some cases we need involuntary commitment because that particular situation you have no capacity to make any other decision than getting more.
Low-cost field detox and then rehab in group text and then get a person in a state where they can be accountable and get incentives to get clean like through drug court to address mental health.
Housing first and field detox with perhaps involuntary commitment is the way to go in my opinion. Especially with active fentanyl/meth addicts. Then we can assess if we can even bring them back to be functional members of society if permanently damaged and mentally ill. Then probably state-run institutions with oversight.