Although I write about addiction and recovery every day and am aware that—as benign as it may be generally regarded—people do seek treatment for marijuana addiction, it never occurred to me that the judicial system would sentence someone to treatment for pot. But according to The Washington Post, not only does this happen, it’s so common that more than half of the people in treatment for pot addiction are there on a court order. I’m sorry but I have to ask, but what kinds of crimes are people committing where they point to weed as the culprit?
Flippant Sentencing
Let me make this clear—I am not saying people can’t be addicted to pot, I am also not saying people shouldn’t seek treatment for pot addiction. I do feel strongly that crimes committed by people who happen to be high shouldn’t warrant flippant sentences to treatment centers. Many people are able to get clean and sober without going to rehab, but there are just as many people who have tried to kick their addiction time and again with no luck and going to formal treatment might be their only hope. These people really want to better themselves and are willing to do the work, so it irks me to think about an addict grasping for hope having to be in group therapy with some dealer who isn’t there to change, but just circumventing jail time.
I know that I am being highly pessimistic in my generalizations. Of course, I have no way of knowing if the girl who just got popped for prostitution and blamed her career choice on being hooked on Mary Jane, really wants to stop using. But it’s not something you hear about—people desperate to get off weed. I am sure they are out there, but my money’s on the majority of pot heads being just fine where they are—even if that is locked away in jail or in rehab—because I don’t think they equate the two as being related. And I am not sure I do either.
Tokers Are More Laid Back and so Are Their Consequences
What is interesting is that according to Keith Humphreys, a researcher and addiction specialist with Stanford University, the courts are typically more sympathetic to pot dealers—sending them to treatment over jail—than they are to heroin or meth dealers, who are more likely to be sent to jail. The irony of this is that if the dealers are, in fact, getting high on their own supply and are addicts, they are more likely to want treatment than those with a daily weed habit. And they there is no question that they are certainly more in need. Not to be a drug classist, but smack trumps pot any day of the week.
Since the criminal justice system is trigger happy with sending people to treatment, rehab beds are getting filled by reluctant clients, pushing needy and eager ones to a waiting list. I hate to say it, because I don’t believe anyone’s disease is less important than another’s, but in the spirit of not really being able to help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves, those hooked on real crime and destruction-inducing narcotics (including booze, which can be deadly) should have seniority when it comes to locking down a spot in a treatment facility.
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