Thank you Senator Leahy and Senator Hatch for inviting me here today. I am here to support the Drug Abuse Education, Prevention and Treatment Act of 2001.

My name is Edyie Hewitt, I am the former director of the Vermont Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health and I am the mother of three sons who have mental health and substance abuse issues. All three of my sons have been incarcerated for drug-related crimes to support their addictions. I want to talk to you today about two of my sons, Theodore, 25, and Tony, 21.

Theodore and Tony were arrested on September 21, 2000 in Rutland, Vermont, for selling heroin, along with ten other people. This made front-page news in our local paper the Rutland Herald. My two sons were made to look like major drug dealers when in fact they were indicted for selling small amounts of heroin in order to support their own drug addictions. I knew my sons were using heroin, but there was no treatment available to help them in our community. I am not here to tell you that they were not wrong for what they did, I am here to ask for your help to help them break their addictions by providing the necessary treatment and after-care supports that are needed to help them break this addiction to heroin.

I have advocated for years to get the necessary supports for my three sons. It started when my eldest son, Theodore, at the age of 15, reached out to ask for help. He had a drug and alcohol screening done by a local mental health center. The mental health center decided that he should go to Huntington Lodge, an adolescent treatment facility, due to his drug addiction. This facility did not work for my son, and I called every treatment facility in Vermont and New Hampshire trying to find a different place for him. Finally, after many phone calls Maple Leaf Farm, a treatment facility in Chittenden County, agreed to interview him. His interviewers there decided that he was just depressed, and that they couldn’t help him. I then brought him back to school and was told he would need to be tutored the rest of the year instead of rejoining his class, because he had admitted to having a "drug problem" in seeking treatment. Students with alcohol problems were not treated that way, but I was told that alcohol was one thing and drugs were another. I have told you this story because after 10 years we are still in the same mind set and still lack the necessary treatment for drug addiction, especially heroin addiction.

My son Tony will be released on March 19 and I have actively sought treatment for him when he is released. At first I received a run-around from treatment centers. I was told that his caseworker needed to make the call, and then I was told that the probation and parole department needed to make the call. After the Heroin Town Meeting that Senator Leahy hosted in Rutland last month, my son was allowed to call a treatment facility and have an interview over the phone. He is scheduled to go to treatment on March 19 for 14 days. Imagine being addicted to drugs for 7 years and then having 14 days of treatment. There is a 14-day time frame due to limited availability and health insurance issues. Although some 12-step programs may be able to help him, he really needs more intensive services to address not only his substance abuse problem, but his mental health issues as well. My son has fear of returning to the community due to the lack of supports; he will be homeless, jobless, and penniless.

So again, I am asking you to help me to help my son because we lack the resources in our community to support his staying away from heroin. We need to create programs that are community-based and offer true rehabilitation services for recovering heroin addicts.

At this time, Vermont is still in a controversial battle over methadone clinics in our state, and right now we still do not have one clinic in place. So how many more people will be incarcerated (in Rutland County there have been 20 arrests in the past few months) and how many more people will die (in Rutland County there have been 9 heroin-related deaths the past two years) from this addiction because they have to wait to be treated?

Did you know that Vermont’s correctional centers are overcrowded and we are in the process of building another facility? Did you also know that 85 percent of the population in our correctional facilities are people between the ages of 18 to 24, and 75 percent of these people have substance abuse issues?

We also need to stop the revolving door of punishment. When a person is arrested for addiction-related crimes, they all too often are jailed and not treated, and then are released back out on to the street without treatment or proper supports or aftercare. This process leads addicts into more addiction-related crimes, with the potential to again be punished instead of treated. I’m encouraged by this bill’s emphasis on improving treatment in jails and prisons.

We need to offer the chance for true rehabilitation by providing the necessary treatment and after-care supports that are needed, when they are needed. We do not need more prisons, we need more treatment and now. We have to create programs that have a continuous wrap-around approach for people with substance abuse addictions, including detoxification units, residential and outpatient treatment, halfway houses, and aftercare programs at a community-based level.

It is time that the Divisions of Corrections, Substance Abuse, and Mental Health in states like Vermont work together and have adequate funding to meet the needs of people with substance addiction. We are all in this together and we need to provide the best possible outcome necessary for our young people to break the disease of addiction. We have to start viewing substance addictions as a public health concern in Vermont and in other rural states, because it is. We have to deal with this issue now; our communities and our children are depending on us.