National Meth Center for Pierce County? (28. June 2007, 16:00 by Derek Young) ~ Okay
So it would appear that Patty Murray has secured funding for a national meth center in Pierce County for “training, education, prevention, and treatment resources all in one facility.” I don’t know what to say… Drug treatment is good. Investment and jobs are good. Does it have to be here?
Link to The News Tribune’s Editor Blog
Thank you, Erik B.
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Hard to believe and just after the state legislature passed a law to try to keep Tacoma from being the perpetual dumping ground for the rest of the state (links to TNT series).
Here’s the City Club of Tacoma’s report on the relation between Pierce County’s high concentration of “treatment facilities” here and crime rate (See page 17).
Social Services in Pierce County: “The Compassionate Community.” Over the years, many individuals and private nonprofit and faith-based organizations have benefited from direct payments for social services required by offenders. In addition, federal, state, and local grants are available to providers for establishing facilities to provide these social services.
An infrastructure of social services related to DOC-supervised offenders has evolved in Pierce County.
Supervised offenders frequently receive funds from DOC and Department of Social and Health Services (hereinafter DSHS), as well as Social Security Administration SSI benefits.
A recurrent theme in the interview process revealed a direct link between drug usage and criminal behavior. As a consequence, there is a large demand for chemical dependency treatment services as a component of DOC supervision.
Providers in Pierce County have filled that demand.
Can’t always outsource this kind of stuff. Sounds like a good opportunity to become more identified with prevention and being part of the solution rather the problem.
2 | Posted by KevinFreitas | Jun 28, 04:53 PM
Can’t always outsource this kind of stuff. Sounds like a good opportunity to become more identified with prevention and being part of the solution rather the problem.
That’s the crux of it.
Will it be a place where meth is studied more and residents in Pierce County receive better treatment?
Or will it create additional infrastructure
that the City Club of Tacoma, TNT, and Prosecutor Gerry Horne have concluded that force more felons into Pierce County from around the state. (And now possibly the country).
I think we need to learn more about it. Alot more. (Of course, they had to choose select Pierce County).
You know, so much money and effort is being spent on showing the negative side of Meth…. but what about the positive side?
5 | Posted by RR Anderson | Jun 28, 05:40 PM
Pierce County has in place programs to help meth addicts, combat the manufacturers and distributors. I believe we are also involved in a pilot program for a new drug to help with withdrawal. Not happy with this “new center” Somehow we need to mobilize to redistribute this methamphedamine monopoly that Pierce County seems to have unwillingly inherited from the State. We have been generous. We have performed our civic duty (and will continue to perform). Time now to put our foot down. Collectively. Admit I am new to this issue, only finding out a few weeks ago about the “dumping ground”. While I park my car everyday in the alley between Fawcett and Tacoma Avenue, while I leave work each night surrounded by addicts, adrenline flowing, afraid and saddened by the faces I see, while my property taxes have risen uncharacteristically, while my human spirit has been compassionate to this terrible epidemic, while I want resolve, I am not prepared anymore for more disproportiate displacement of methamphedime “folk” in my backyard. Suppose my thought is: I do not think the general public is aware that we are a dumping ground, to the extent that we are. Thank you for the information. And, frankly, I envision somehow funding the billboard at the bottom of 9th Street and Pacific (and other areas) stating the same, in a diplomatic yet frank message aimed at the people who live and work here (in Pierce County).
6 | Posted by Kristin | Jun 28, 09:43 PM
Question:
What’s a new way Pierce County can enrich itself with taxpayer dollars?
7 | Posted by Mofo from the Hood | Jun 29, 06:43 AM
What we’ve known for centuries:
• Humans have a tendency toward despair.
• Ingesting certain chemical compounds provide relief from despair, but alter or disintegrate the mind.
• People with altered or disentegrated minds act unpredictably.
• Unpredictable people are hard to control.
• Uncontrollable people destroy civilization.
8 | Posted by Mofo from the Hood | Jun 29, 11:53 AM
“• Uncontrollable people destroy civilization.”
...not to mention neighborhoods
9 | Posted by Laura H. | Jun 29, 01:32 PM
This is related. Perhaps Pierce County can finally make some progress from being a perpetual Dumping Ground:
State releases preliminary list of counties needing work-release programs
Pierce County ranks low on a new priority list of counties that need work-release facilities for criminals who are about to be released from prison.
The Washington Department of Corrections on Monday released a preliminary list of counties and regions that “analysis shows have an unmet need” for facilities that house low-risk offenders during the final six months of their prison sentences.
Pierce County officials have complained for years that the Tacoma area is a dumping ground for prison inmates. Earlier this year, they persuaded the Legislature and the governor to pass a law requiring the Department of Corrections to equitably distribute such community-based programs.
This is a public interest topic of major importance.
For starters, it is encouraging to read that the public can organize groups to shape political policies, as evidenced by the results achieved in Snohomish County.
Likewise, I’m not convinced that any county “needs” a work-release program. Are we to assume that ex-cons or any form of deviancy can be corrected by teaching job skills?
I think education is needed, and job skills are a practical solution, but let’s go beyond functional excellence and teach general excellence.
Maybe someone needs to tell their local ex-con to stop acting like a character, and instead try building personal character (this might be a risky thing to say to an ex-con, but you get my point).
Anyway, the education program that I have in mind would need to oppose the predominate world-view that is repeated over and over in the popular media—- the goal of life is self-gratification.
The major opposition to that view is propounded by faith based organizations, of which many are already in place and serving to reform ex-cons. It is the Christian world-view that offers a true alternative from a life of self-serving behavior to a life of serving others.
Not everbody gets that.
11 | Posted by Mofo from the Hood | Jul 3, 01:20 AM
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