In 1999, in researching a report on foster care, I interviewed and surveyed in writing more than 150 current and former foster youth in California and New York. When I asked the question, "What might have kept your family together?" one answer came up over and over: Help with a parent's drug problem.

"My father was into drugs instead of me," one teenager wrote. "That's why I'm in the system."

"If there wasn't drugs," wrote another, "I probably would not know what a system is."

Our response to these children has to date lacked imagination: We incarcerate addicted parents and place their children in foster care, or leave them to fend for themselves. CASA researchers spent three years scrutinizing state budgets in an effort to figure out the dollar cost of this approach. In 1998, they determined, the states spent $81.3 billion dealing with drug abuse and its consequences, but of each dollar spent, only 4 cents went to prevention and treatment. This imbalance, they found, had a particularly powerful impact on the young: The states spent $5.3 billion addressing cases of child abuse and neglect, 79 percent of which could be traced to parental drug or alcohol abuse.

But as the nation tentatively embarks on a new way of doing things, early indications are promising. In California, the Department of Corrections has reported a 20 percent drop in the number of drug offenders in its custody since Proposition 36 was implemented, and a 10 percent drop in women inmates overall. As the measure is fully implemented, the state Legislative Analyst's Office estimates, it will save between $100 and $150 million each year in prison costs.

When parents do get treatment, the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment has found, kids come home and taxpayers save even more money. In a Florida pilot program, for example, 180 women treated in a single residential program regained custody of 580 children who had previously been in the care of the state.

Charles (not his real name), 18, grew up in Northern California under the old drug enforcement regime. He spent his childhood and adolescence in a series of foster homes and juvenile halls while his crack-addicted mother cycled in and out of jail and prison. When Charles was 16, his mother put herself in rehab. Today, she works at a church and has her own two-bedroom apartment. She hasn't used drugs in two years.

"It feels good," says Charles. "That little piece that's lost -- it's filled the gap there. At first I used to think my mom would be dead, but now I know she's going to see my kids. She'll see me graduate from high school, go on to college. I used to pray at night for a new mommy and daddy. Now I'm getting my mama back."

Does large-scale treatment work as an approach to drug addiction? We don't know, because we've never tried it. But as the casualties of our decades-long war on drugs continue to fill not only our nation's prisons but its foster homes, group homes and juvenile halls, there's plenty of evidence that the alternative has failed the children it was meant to serve.

Despite years of disappointment and betrayal, children of addicts will likely tell you they are willing to give their parents another chance. Three decades into a failed war on drugs, voters may finally be ready to do the same.

Recent Stories