Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for calling this hearing on substance abuse, one of our nation's most pervasive problems. We have nearly 15 million drug users in this country, four million of whom are hard-core addicts.
Substance abuse is public safety problem, a public health problem, and a public expenditure problem.
Illegal drugs are responsible for thousands of deaths each year, and they fuel the spread of a number of communicable diseases, including AIDS and Hepatitis C, as well as some of our worst social problems, including child abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault. We tend to stereotype drug abuse as an urban problem, but the steadily growing number of heroin and methamphetamine addicts in rural villages and suburban towns shows that this is simply not the case. The reality is that addiction is a disease that does not discriminate by neighborhood, age, gender, socio-economic status, race, or creed. Drugs are in nearly every town and schoolyard in this country. We have certainly made some headway and have clearly shown our commitment to dealing with the problem, but in my opinion, treatment and prevention always get the short end of the stick.