Drugs, Arrest, Incarceration, Responsibility and the Resurrection of a Life

This country has been having a seemingly endless debate about drugs.  Although there are gradations in between, there seem to be two mostly opposing camps, to wit, those who would treat drugs as a law enforcement problem, and those who would treat them as a public health problem.

I spent four years as Counselor to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration.  Drugs are both a law enforcement and a public health problem, and we aren’t going to solve it either by dismissing law enforcement as mere latter day Puritanism, nor by dismissing the opportunity for treatment as mere mush-minded coddling.  But what’s getting overlooked is that no part of the system can be the foundation for a solution.  The foundation for overcoming drugs, as with so much else, is the individual’s understanding that he is responsible for his life and behavior, and his determination to own that responsibility every minute of every day.  This post is about the story of one young lady, Ginny Burton, who resurrected her life with the indispensable help of law enforcement, incarceration, and coming to terms with her failings  —  and then, wonderfully, her potential.

The story, from the CBS affiliate in Seattle, is titled, “From 12-year-old meth addict to honors college scholar: The redemption of Ginny Burton.”  It’s not that long and it’s very much worth the read.  It’s not a love song for policing and imprisonment, but it’s not a condemnation, either, and shows that they can be the essential catalyst for a reckoning that, in Ms. Burton’s case, saved her life and gave her a future.  These passages in particular caught my attention:

Her last trip to prison was in 2008. She was in for 33 months, and she stayed clean for six months after she got out. But she relapsed for the umpteenth time and was arrested one last time on Dec. 5, 2012, and she says it saved her life….

Last year, she graduated with honors from the University of Washington as the 2020 Truman Scholar.

Ginny wants to change the world and believes she can. She wants to get her master’s degree and use it to save lives by changing prisons, so that addiction is tackled head-on on the inside, but also out in the world, where she sees what she calls a “learned helplessness” that she considers a death sentence. And, she knows. Ginny says she’s been to more than 20 funerals in the last seven years, funerals for friends who were drug addicts, people who she believes have been loved to death by Seattle and King County, and a culture of tolerance at all expense.

“Nobody wants to hurt anybody’s feelings,” she says, “everybody wants to be loving and supportive, which means we don’t hold up a mirror to people. We don’t want to tell anybody they can’t do this, we’re just going to support them to death. We’re gonna love them to death.”

Sitting on the lawn with rhododendrons in full bloom behind her, she continues…

“It’s not love. I am grateful the Pierce County Sheriff’s loved me enough to arrest me. I am grateful that the judges loved me enough to incarcerate me because those incarcerations gave me an opportunity to work myself into changing my life.”