W
hile
perusing
my
Facebook feed during
a study break earlier
this week, I found myself scrolling
past New Jersey Gov.
Chris Christie’s (R) face
an unusual number of
times. With the end
of
the
presidential
election and Christie’s
replacement
as
chairman of President-
elect Donald Trump’s
transition
team,
the
governor had seemingly
fallen by the wayside in
today’s political news
cycle. However, as I scrolled past
the video of Christie from October
2015 for the fourth time, I decided
I might as well see what the fuss
was about — and I’m glad I did.
While Gov. Christie only implored
his audience to consider attitudes
about drug addiction, this video
reminded me of another very
serious and taboo issue: mental
health. We must reach across the
aisle to ensure an open dialogue
and to vigorously combat these
two fatal issues.
Gov.
Christie’s
mother,
he
said, had been a smoker since
she was 16 years old. When she
developed lung cancer in her 70s,
“No one came to me and said,
‘Don’t treat her ’cause she got what
she deserved,’ ” Christie stated.
Nobody refused to treat her and
nobody abandoned her to cancer.
Yet, he says, “Somehow, if it’s
heroin, or cocaine or alcohol, we
say, ‘Well, they decided. They’re
getting what they deserved.’ ”
Instead of treating drug addicts for
their disease, we jail them or deem
them to be lost causes.
This
culture
surrounding
drug addiction is not only costly
in terms of human lives, but is
also just bad fiscal policy. In the
United States in 2013, about 85,000
people died from alcohol abuse,
20,000 from illicit drug abuse and
20,000 more from prescription
drug abuse. While death is one
extreme, drug abuse often also
leads to relationship issues, job
loss,
homelessness
and
other
devastating social and monetary
losses. Additionally, according to
FiveThirtyEight, of the more than
207,847 inmates in federal prisons
nationwide,
48.6
percent
are
incarcerated for drug offenses. To
put this into perspective, the next
most pervasive offense in federal
prisons is for weapons, arson or
explosives — at a comparatively
low 16.8 percent.
Substance abuse costs U.S.
taxpayers more than $600 billion
annually. The average cost for
one full year of imprisonment
is roughly equal to $24,000 per
person. Yet, the average cost of a
full year of treatment for opioid
addicts is about $4,700 per patient.
The National Institute on Drug
Abuse also states that “every dollar
invested in addiction
treatment
programs
yields
a
return
of
between $4 and $7 in
reduced drug-related
crime, criminal justice
costs,
and
theft.”
Clearly, incarceration
is not the appropriate
method for handling
substance
abuse.
If
we can save lives and
taxpayer
dollars
at
the same time, it is inconceivable
that we should continue such an
inefficient policy.
There are plenty who argue
drug addiction is not an illness.
However,
according
to
wide
swaths of research, addiction is
indeed an illness — and one that
is incredibly debilitating if not
properly handled. The DSM-5
— the handbook for diagnosis of
mental disorders used by nearly
all health care professionals —
has an entire section devoted to
substance-related and addiction
disorders. This includes not only
tobacco addiction, but also alcohol,
marijuana, stimulant and opioid
addiction. Yet, there is still a looming
stigma clouding our perceptions of
non-tobacco addiction. Despite the
evidence, we have a difficult time
conceptualizing drug addiction as an
illness and not a choice. To be sure,
people choose to begin using drugs.
But just as much as they do not choose
to become addicted to tobacco, they
do not choose to become addicted
to other substances. People turn to
drugs for a variety of reasons, and
instead of abandoning them, we
must treat them. Further, the first
step in combatting drug addiction
is to talk about it. We cannot sweep
such a pervasive issue under the rug
if we wish to seriously fight it. In
talking about it, we open the floor to
discuss solutions that may actually
address the issue more successfully.
In addition to drug addiction,
mental health is another horribly
stigmatized subject. On a personal
note, mental health has become
possibly the largest hardship in my
life to date. While I fortunately do
not suffer personally from mental
health issues, I’ve been in the
passenger seat to the struggles of
a number of people close to me.
In the beginning, these problems
are difficult to detect: long stints
in bed, withdrawn temperaments,
unwillingness to attend social
events and general irritability — all
of which could look like just a bad
day or week. But the regression
often happens quickly, leading to
outbursts, cuts, irrational behavior
and worse. And from there,
psychiatry sessions, medications,
ruined relationships, job loss,
police visits, stints in jail, stints
in rehabilitation centers, stints in
medical wards at hospitals, failed
classes, failed suicide attempts
and suicide actualizations. Mental
illness — no matter the form — is
crippling. If left untreated, if left
ignored, it can destroy everything
and everyone in its wake.
Yet, in public settings we never
talk about it. We don’t talk about
it, so we don’t know how to talk
about it. We don’t talk about it, so
we don’t know how to prevent it. We
don’t talk about it, so we don’t know
how to ask for help. I never learned
about mental health issues in my
grade-school health classes. We
learned about sexual health, physical
health and, at times, drug and alcohol
problems, but never mental health. I
didn’t recognize the warning signs
at first. And I didn’t know how to
address them once the problem had
grown worse. I didn’t understand,
and therefore didn’t know how to
help. One in five adults in the United
States have suffered from a mental
health issue and the issue is especially
salient on college campuses. In fact,
suicide is the second leading cause of
death in individuals ages 10 to 24. If
we don’t teach people about mental
health issues at an early age, the
warning signs may go undetected
until it is too late.
I am not usually one to agree
with Gov. Christie. In fact, I often
vehemently
oppose
much
of
what he stands for. Yet, his video
reminded me that even after this
vicious and divisive presidential
election, liberals and conservatives
still have common ground. And
we still have serious work to do.
Drug addiction and mental health
are not partisan issues. Matters
of life and death should not be
danced around for political gain.
As Christie said, “I’m pro-life. And
I think that if you’re pro-life, that
means you’ve got to be pro-life for
the whole life, not just for the nine
months that they’re in the womb.
… It’s easy to be pro-life for the
nine months they’re in the womb.
They haven’t done anything to
disappoint us yet.”
Democrats and Republicans
alike — pro-life or not — have
an obligation to combat drug
abuse and mental health issues.
We must work to rid ourselves
of these stigmas and develop
education
and
treatment
programs in order to save lives.
We must alter our thinking —
together — and devote resources
to programs that will fix these
issues instead of punish them.
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, December 12, 2016
Stop the stigmas
CLARISSA
DONNELLY-
DEROVEN
LAURA SCHINAGLE
Managing Editor
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.
SHOHAM GEVA
Editor in Chief
CLAIRE BRYAN
and REGAN DETWILER
Editorial Page Editors
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
Carolyn Ayaub
Claire Bryan
Regan Detwiler
Brett Graham
Caitlin Heenan
Jeremy Kaplan
Ben Keller
Minsoo Kim
Alexis Megdanoff
Madeline Nowicki
Anna Polumbo-Levy
Jason Rowland
Ali Safawi
Kevin Sweitzer
Rebecca Tarnopol
Ashley Tjhung
Stephanie Trierweiler
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
MELISSA STRAUSS | COLUMN
Melissa Strauss can be reached at
melstrau@umich.edu.
CLARISSA DONNELLY-DEROVEN | COLUMN
Finding alternatives to police and prison
A
couple days after President-
elect Donald Trump won, a
couple days after a woman
in a hijab on East William Street was
threatened to be set on
fire, a couple days after
a woman on the corner
of
South
University
Avenue and Washtenaw
Avenue
was
pushed
down a hill for believing
her religion and living in
America, and a couple
days after the Southern
Poverty Law Center
collected evidence of
more than 900 hate
crimes in the first 10 days
of Trump’s America, I
sat in my feminist thought class. We
talked about the reported violence,
we argued about the labeling of the
violence as “intimidation” and we
imagined the role the police might
play in the coming years.
When violence happens, the general
sentiment is that you’re supposed to
call the police. The police will solve our
problems, they will make us safe again.
This, though, is only true for certain
groups of people.
Trump and the rhetoric of
his
campaign
normalized
and
encouraged angry white people to
commit violence against people
of color, LGBTQ people, Muslims,
Jews, people with disabilities,
women, etc. Almost none of these
groups have been treated well
historically or are treated well
currently by the police, especially
people of color. As an institution,
the
police
have
regularly
brutalized
these
communities
and/or ignored their needs. Thus,
the people who are expected to
have the most violence committed
against them in the following years
are put in an impossible position:
What do you do when the people
you’re calling on to deal with the
violence perpetrated against you
have a history of perpetrating that
same, or worse, violence against you
and your community?
There is a very real threat of
increased civilian violence against
people of color following Trump’s
campaign and election, but because the
police regularly commit acts of violence
against communities of color, there
still is no institution or organization
to properly “deal with” this violence.
Police
and
prison
abolitionist
movements are not new, but they feel
necessary now more than ever.
In July of this year, Fox News
invited community activist Jessica
Disu, among other folks, to come
onto “The Kelly File” to discuss
the murders of Alton Sterling,
Philando Castile and the Dallas
police officers. The conversation was
gross. It involved lots of white people
yelling racist shit and
Disu rolling her eyes,
visibly uncomfortable.
Eventually
Disu
chimed
in,
saying
to an array of boos,
“We need to abolish
the police.” “Abolish
the
police?!”
Megyn
Kelly repeated back, in
horror. Disu continued,
”Demilitarize the police,
disarm the police, we
need to come up with
community solutions for
transformative justice.”
In an interview with the Chicago
Reader — which is really amazing
and I recommend you read it —
Disu compares the abolition of the
police to the abolition of slavery:
“I’m sure when someone first said,
‘We have to abolish slavery,’ it was
like, ‘Whoa, that’s the stupidest idea,
we’re making all of this money off of
free labor, and you’re saying abolish?
Like, that sounds ridiculous.’”
Police (and prison) abolition is
far from the acceptable discourse
concerning police reform you
might hear on news outlets like
CNN, Fox or even MSNBC. But
many
communities,
especially
poor communities of color, where
the police are either not helpful
or actively violent, have created
and implemented police-free and
prison-free ways of dealing with
harm and violence.
You can read about lots of
examples in the Chicago Reader,
and I’ll summarize one for the sake
of space. Ethan Ucker, co-founder
of a restorative justice program in
Chicago called Circles and Ciphers,
tells a story about a robbery: A
young guy stole from a store in the
community. “One of the people at
the store whose stuff was taken
said, ‘Look, I don’t want to call the
cops. Is there anything we can
do?’” Somehow they found out that
the young guy was selling some
of the stolen stuff on Facebook,
and they also found out that the
young guy went to school at a place
where Ucker had done some of his
restorative justice work with Circles
and Ciphers. So, Ucker was able to
contact a teacher and get in touch
with the young guy who had stolen
the stuff and eventually brought the
young guy who stole back together
with the person he had stolen from.
The young guy returned the stuff
he hadn’t sold, and “in restitution
for everything else” the young guy
worked at the store. After he had
worked as much as he needed, he
realized he actually liked working
there, so he went back after he was
done to work and volunteer. He
formed a relationship with the store,
the owners, the patrons, etc.
Restorative
justice
is
based
on the principle that crime and
violence
are
offenses
against
communities
and
individuals,
instead of offenses against “the
state.” This makes the approach and
the reparations necessarily more
intimate and personal. Studies have
shown that in general, restorative
justice approaches “reduce crime
more effectively with more …
serious crime,” especially violent
crime. Restorative justice makes
perpetrators of crime much more
active in accepting responsibility
than they’re made to be in the
traditional,
impersonal
justice
system; you committed X crime, the
punishment for which is Y numbers
of years in prison, here you go, accept
it and then you’ve paid your debt to
society — but not really even because
our prisons are mostly a racialized
caste system that once you get stuck
in, you can never really escape.
We’ve been severely misled about
the function of police and prison
in society today. A world without
police and a world without prisons
doesn’t mean a world without
protection or safety, nor a world
plagued by violence. The police
force as we know it was not created
in response to rising crime rates,
rather as a means of social control, “a
response to ‘disorder.’ ” In southern
states, the police were deliberately
established as a slave patrol, whose
responsibilities included: “(1) to
chase down, apprehend, and return
to their owners, runaway slaves;
(2) to provide a form of organized
terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3)
to maintain a form of discipline for
slave-workers who were subject to
summary justice, outside of the law,
if they violated any plantation rules.”
A world without police and
prisons means a de-prioritizing
of a certain understanding of
“order,” it means community based
solutions to problems and it means a
redistribution of funding to support
these new efforts. The presumption
is not that crime will stop, but that
we will find ways to deal with crime
that do not necessitate more
violence nor one-size-fits-all
impersonal punishment.
Clarissa Donnelly-DeRoven can be
reached at cedon@umich.edu.
ASHLEY ZHANG | COLUMN
First semester reflection
T
hough the semblance may
not be obvious at first glance,
an academic semester can
actually quite feasibly be compared to
an orchestral piece — Edvard Grieg’s
In the Hall of the Mountain King to
be exact. If you’re not
familiar with the song, it
starts slowly and quietly
in the lower registers of
the orchestra: the cellos,
basses and bassoons
calm and steady. As the
music progresses, the
tempo gradually builds
as more instruments
in different keys are
added. Over the course
of the next two and a
half minutes or so, the “accelerando”
and “crescendo” snowball until the
“prestissimo” finale, at which point
the music has reached new heights
of frenzy and volume. To listen to it is
to ride an uncontrollable train until,
all of a sudden, it ends with a crash.
As the end of my first semester
in college nears with unbelievable
speed, I feel as though I’m in the
midst of Greig’s masterpiece —
the sheer volume of assignments,
projects and tests thrown at me
provokes whiplash and swallows
me whole. In the middle of such
a frenetic time, it can be difficult
to find a moment to breathe and
reflect on the past semester. It can
be harder still to believe that a mere
three months ago, college was all
shiny and new, the semester was as
lax as the beginning of In the Hall
of the Mountain King and I was
just another bright-eyed and bushy-
tailed freshman. I should note: I am
still a freshman, but my eyes not as
bright and my metaphorical tail not
as bushy.
Although to upperclassmen I may
still be green, in my mind, I — a soon-
to-be second-semester freshman
— am as wise and seasoned as they
come. I no longer get lost on the
way to the Undergraduate Science
Building. I know the Bursley-Baits
Route as well as I know all the football
chants. I’ve learned that meeting
someone in class or at a party does
not change the chances that they’ll
remember your name the next time
you meet. I know that independence
is dangerous in that you
can, and will, spend all
your
Dining
Dollars
on overpriced chips,
ramen and coffee. I’ve
realized that, despite
high school starting at
7:20 a.m., 8 a.m. classes
(and
even
9
a.m.
classes) start too early.
And that’s just the
surface-level stuff. As
cheesy as it sounds,
college has taught me so much about
myself. For example, I’ve come to
realize that my mind is much more
suited to sciences than math, despite
any contrasting notions I harbored in
high school. I’ve learned that I don’t
love parties as much as I thought I
would. I’ve realized that I cannot
function without sleep, not even
with exorbitant amounts of coffee.
Even more than that, college has
given me the ability to experience
so many things for the first time
and has, in turn, changed me. In
September, I was terrified to move
out and live without my family for
the first time. Three months later, I
love the freedom and independence
I have in college. Back home, I’d be
mortified of the thought of eating
alone. Now, I cherish whatever alone
time I have in the dining hall, free to
check my emails and just rest while I
eat. However, the largest change has
been catalyzed by the opportunity of
writing this very column.
I applied to be a columnist for
the Daily on a whim with zero
expectations
given
my
limited
experience with journalism. So
when I was accepted, I received the
news with a mix of surprise and
trepidation. In fact, here’s an excerpt
of my journal entry from Sept. 1,
2016, the day I was accepted:
“Holy crap. I was just accepted as
a columnist for The Michigan Daily!
While on one hand, I’m excited that
I was accepted, on the other hand,
I’m terrified … I just can’t believe that
people will be actually reading what
I write. I’m not qualified to have
people listen to me!! My writing has
always been something I’m proud
of, but kept hidden, because I’m
embarrassed for people I know to
read my stuff … and judge it. My heart
is already pounding with anxiety.”
It’s hard to believe that I wrote
that only three months ago, but the
seven columns I’ve written between
then and now are evidence of how
my confidence in my writing has
grown. Over the course of seven
columns, I’ve learned how to use
this small voice I have to bring
attention to issues that are important
to me: Asian representation in
media, oppressive period culture,
the unpretty reality of being a girl,
the ridiculousness that is sleep
deprivation competition and so
much more. The kind and thought-
provoking emails and comments
I’ve received because of them have
mitigated any doubts I had about
my credibility. I once thought no
one cared about my opinion, but I’ve
learned that if you have something
worthwhile to say, people will listen.
This column has given me a
platform to speak my voice. Yet, even
without such a platform, college as a
whole provides many opportunities
to be yourself and follow your
interests without fear of judgment.
There are far too many people on
campus to worry about all their
opinions and judgments. Thus, to
any miserable high schoolers who
may be reading this, let me tell you
one thing: It gets better.
Ashley Zhang can be reached at
ashleyzh@umich.edu.
ANNIE TURPIN | CONTACT ANNIE AT ASTURPIN@UMICH.EDU
MELISSA
STRAUSS
ASHLEY
ZHANG
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