Cocaine Town

When I used to live in Atlanta, where I grew up, I regularly read "Creative Loafing"... a free newspaper that typically features local city news through a younger, urbanized, and consistently progressive lens.

I read this article this morning, Cocaine Town, which discusses the embarassing rate at which drug users (highly disproportinately black and latino) are filtered into the city's two largest jails. While Atlanta apparently is a leader of cocaine users flooding jails it is disgracefully a lagging caboose when it comes to providing drug treatment, despite calling for more outpatient services by high level members of the judiciaries for substance use care as the number one instrument against recidivism.

Atlanta has become a major hub for cocaine distribution in the United States, which is an issue that should not be ignored. However, this is another prime example of the social injustices that occur when incentives are in place for the law to swing at the low hanging fruit with their batons. Morevover, this is an example of a ripe context where public health needs to assert itself.

Creative Loafing's article was inspired by the ADAM report (stands for ARRESTEE DRUG ABUSE MONITORING) which is a federally funded project with the task of tracking rates of drug use in American cities' jails.

I love Atlanta and always will, but how the city's drug policy is a disgrace.

DHC